


A Series Of Utopian Events

by fadeverb



Series: Leo [35]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-10 05:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 53,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2011845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story is over. But Leo's still around, and time hasn't stopped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Utopia And Dysphoria Rhyme

**Author's Note:**

> This is, as has been vaguely promised to some people, an aftermath story. (Take a look at the Luna stories, for comparison.) Light on plot, heavy on world-building and talking heads.

I may be hyperventilating. It's hard to say when I don't technically have lungs.

Penny is a golden-brown swirl around me. (I kept forgetting, for some reason, that he'd have feathers. They're excellent feathers, like the soft leather you find on old books.) He is the nearest thing to a barrier in this place, which belongs, I think, to Revelation. No one else would build something that looks this much like a monastery without any fucking doors. This room is made of stone (do they quarry stone in Heaven, or just decide to have it?) and I would like to spend some time considering the choices they made in its design, but again, hyperventilating.

The Archangel was right. The hurting stopped. He just didn't mention the other issue. Which is so obvious that of course he wouldn't mention it, I'm smart, anyone who was even very stupid would know about this part.

I pull the shape of my best vessel around me, and that makes me feel slightly better. Feet on the ground. That's a thing. Feet, ground. Somewhat theoretical feet that are just a virtual representation of a corporeal possession of mine, and let's not get into the level of reality of the ground on this plane of existence, but I will take it.

"You can fly, here," Penny says, and he means it so encouragingly (I can understand a language now that I never did before, it is perfectly clear _meaning_ in my brain, in a way Helltongue has never been, like verbal telepathy, and I can't think about that right now) but it's reminding me that I have no wings. I will never have wings again, unless something goes hideously wrong.

"Walking," I say. "Let's stick to walking. Anywhere. Maybe somewhere with more doors."

A line of feathers fluff up along the spines of his topmost wings--I will have to learn Seraph body language from scratch, and do Ofanim even have body language?--and he says, "Let's."

One foot in front of the other gets me out of the room. Souls who are _not_ damned, though they look about the same regardless, chat with, god, so many angels. Not so many. We pass maybe a half dozen, mostly Seraphim, and flitting infant angels who are unnervingly uniform in appearance. Not tiny clones, but all following the same limb structure, wing placement, a face and how could anyone before the Fall doubt that humans were something peculiarly unique, when these creatures look so much like them?

They ask questions of Penny, and he answers them. I can't deal with that yet. One foot after another. I wear the memory of my own clothing on this image of a vessel. These aren't bad shoes; I bought them in New York, swapping vessels as I ran between Zhune and Ash. Cheap and practical and not as durable as I might like. Do things wear down, in Heaven? If they don't, with all those angels of Creation around, they must have warehouses of what's been discarded and forgotten and become superfluous. The opposite of a scarcity economy: not plenty, but too much.

It probably doesn't work like that.

I could ask Penny. Trade would know.

He gets the question to me first. We are in a corridor, alone for an instant, and he asks, "How does it feel?"

I have words for this place that will say exactly what I mean, and I would rather use less precise ones. It doesn't seem to be an option. (It must be an option, or how would they teach mortal languages? I'll figure it out later.) I look at my hands in front of me, which are not entirely there. My vessel, a polite fiction based on a distant reality, and everyone here can see what I really am. Now. I am something else now and let's just say I'm having a few issues with the topic. "I don't know how to cope with being made of...fire. Rings. Some indeterminate number of rings."

"Three," Penny says. "They lock together."

"Three rings of fire. It's not _natural_." I can't even say that without the subtext of _opinion, not literally true, of course I know otherwise_ running through my words. It's impossible to lie in this language. I hadn't realized until now the depth of constraint this builds on people here. Even the humans can't lie. You can't even lie by accident, though I think it could be managed by omission; what you say carries your confidence and how you acquired it. _I know this is true because I saw it myself_ and _I know this is true because it fits what I already believe strongly_ will make the same sentence sound different. All I have to do is think these things to myself, and try mouthing them here, to know this much.

I wonder if this makes the poetry of Heaven banal, or more nuanced. It can't be anywhere near as slippery as the poetry of Hell.

"I like them," Penny says, which is true and opinion and true opinion and I am still trying to untangle the nuances of that (which aren't tangled, more like parallel lines, but too many for me to look at all at once) when we step out of a doorway into the sunlight.

#

So here's the thing about Heaven. The open spaces, I mean, where you can look straight up into presumably infinite blue sky. (I have not yet looked into whether or not it's actually infinite, because I have better things to spend my time researching this five minutes.) It's bright and blue and it ought to be like standing beneath a Texas summer sun. Searing. Blinding. The kind of light that washes out all the colors and makes it impossible to see anything but the glare off the sidewalks, much less this city that's trying to do for white marble and pearl what the Emerald City did for its eponymous gems.

It's not. It's impossibly clear, like the language. Terrifyingly direct, again, like the language. You can't hide in sunlight like this. (There are shadows around here, which I will be glad for.) And looking up at that sky, it's like the first time I reached the corporeal and walked outside of that Tether and felt like I was going to fall off the world. The lack of ceiling, there, after the eternal _inside_ of Hell. But I know skies. I know horizons, and the infinite up, and this shouldn't bother me, but it's like that first step outside all over again.

"It's like Ash said," I tell Penny.

Things I am not thinking about right now: the impossible difficulty of having a friendly conversation with Ash again. I've known him for less than two years, and I've lost contact with better friends before. He'll be fine.

I could see Nik. Maybe. If they let her see anyone. If she's still alive. She's probably still alive, right? Heaven has this whole thing about having high quality, low mortality personnel. Maybe she's still doing penance for her years as an Outcast.

I have no idea where we're walking. I have been following Penny down these streets, and we are unexceptional here, Seraph and companion (if I think about the details I'm going to be queasy again) walking down white streets that don't hurt my eyes when the sunlight reflects off them. We are part of a thin crowd; every angelic form that still hits a part of my instincts with _flee from the enemy that is serious business_ in visibility up and down this street, and so many humans. As if Shal-Mari had off-hours, and traffic control, and much better trash service. And Malakim. Whole lot of Malakim.

A herd of Cherubim gallops down the streets. It ought to be a running of the bulls level of chaos and danger, and yet no one so much as steps out of the way, and there is no difficulty. Never mind optional gravity, Heaven appears to have optional collision detection. Where the running Cherubim step, there never happens to be a pedestrian. Where a group of gawking souls (new to Heaven? as new as I am?) meanders, there's never a Cherub's hoof in the way.

It's as unreal and impossible as the ballroom the god of whales built in the Marches, but I'm used to things not making sense in the Marches. The celestial plane is supposed to be where everything is truest and most real, and--oh, well. It's not like I ever really believed that.

The corporeal still seems like the primary plane of reality. Which just goes to show I'm not quite right in the Forces as a. An angel goes. Still not quite right.

"Hey, Penny."

"Yes?"

"Is it traditional to have a shrieking meltdown right after redemption?"

He turns his eyes toward me, drifting along at my side with wings half-spread. "Traditional," he says carefully, "would be an overly strong word for it."

"What is traditional?"

"I haven't been to enough of them to know," Penny says. That one he doesn't have to think about. "There may be strong traditions in certain Words, but I don't know of any specific procedures as such. I thought we might stop by the central office to get your housing allocation and bank account set up."

"There's a bank?"

"Most of Heaven does business in Essence itself," Penny says, "but we find it convenient to be able to discuss it, and transfer ownership of it, in more precise units than simple body-to-body transfer allows. There are also periodic experiments in isolated economic theories, but that only uses individual reserves based on volunteers, and, ah, am I boring you?"

"No," I say. "I just." I drag my hands through my hair (it's all an illusion, but it's solid enough to let me feel okay about my self) and try not to look any Malakim in the eye. "I bet you get reliable cell phone service between principalities here, too. Or whatever you call the divisions between the territories."

"Archangels hold Cathedrals, some in a more bounded and finite manner than others. You'll find War and the Wind both in the Groves, with Stone beneath them, though Stone also crosses over into the area beneath Gabriel's Volcano. Judgment and the Sword are here in the Eternal City, though Judgment mostly keeps to the Council Spires, while the Sword manages much of the work focused on incoming souls." He flicks a wing here and there as he explains, and at some other point I'll ask if Heaven's geography is a little more static--or Euclidean--than Hell's. "Yves' Library is either adjacent to or a large portion of the Eternal City, depending on who you ask, though the Halls of Progress are distinctly separate. On a similar note, the Glade is directly adjacent to the Groves, but there's a clear division between them."

"You have such straightforward names for these things. It's all--nouns, maybe an adjective slapped on. Nothing like 'Tartarus' here."

"Most of these names came first," Penny says, which is obvious, but he doesn't say it as if my comment was stupid. For a Seraph, he is astoundingly considerate at times. "There was no reason to call them anything but what they were, and are. I gather that matters in Hell tend to be less...settled."

"Or distinct. Yeah." I shove my hands in my pockets. "Is Trade in the city?" It's like some sort of grim inverse of Shal-Mari, but I can't really think of it as the divine reflection of Hades. I've never been to Hades, but it can't have streets like this. Skies like this.

"No, Trade has its own territory. We live in Commerce Park." This gesture he makes with a flick of his forked tongue, indicating the direction we've been walking. "Some people think of it as nothing but the markets, but it's as much a place to live as any of the others."

"Opinion," I say.

He blinks at me, that three-pair ripple. "Yes," he says, "but _honest_ opinion," and I swear to god, Seraphim can smile.

#

This is what it looks like when I sit down at the window seat in Penny's office, and stare out that window.

There's a market plaza spread out below us. The ground is laid with stone tiles, and I can't tell if they date back to shortly after the creation of the universe, or if they were set in place five minutes before we arrived. The pattern is abstract, asymmetrical, implying a kind of movement towards...the central skyscraper, I think, which we can only see the top of from this point. That's the kind of place that says _an Archangel lives here_ , when you see it standing highest, but it doesn't loom. It's only high enough to be seen from a distance.

The plaza's busy, enough so that you'd expect people to be rubbing elbows as they move between the vendors--it's all stalls and tents and combinations of the two, as if permanence is only for living in, not for selling from--but again Heaven doesn't do _crowds_ , just...lots of people all moving comfortably through a space. I can't wrap my head around the traffic patterns. Commerce itself seems pretty confined to the ground, though movement's in three dimensions. Relievers in particular fly rather than walking; they swarm like bats and bees, though presumably they're safer to handle than either.

And. God. It's green. It's a plaza, stone on the ground and tents on the stone, but the pattern includes planters of real growing things. I can't remember ever seeing plants growing in Hell, that I was sure was real and not some decorative imitation. This plaza has _trees_. If I look down, several of the windows below us flower boxes.

"Is she angry at me?" I ask Penny, while he finishes putting his coffee together.

"I'm afraid you'll have to narrow that down," he says, and slips over to coil beside me on the seat. Around would be better (and I can't help but think of these fiery rings long enough to contemplate the possibility of _through_ ), but he's being oh so careful, like I might flinch or shatter if he pushes.

It'll get annoying, if he keeps it up too long. Right now it's sort of...soothing. That he cares enough to do that. That he is, despite being so perfectly angelic and seraphic and otherwise closer to the heart of the Symphony's meaning, not always very good at figuring people out.

"I guess there's a list. Um. Luna?"

"I'm not sure. She may do some shouting, but she'll want to see you. We could send a message; she's usually with Vaina or Johannes."

I don't want to know right now if Vaina is still upset about that whole thing in the Marches. It feels like a thornier question. "Johannes? Has she--well, Mercurian, I guess she would make friends."

"A very young Elohite," Penny says. "They seem to get along well." He's being precise, there; he doesn't know the exact nature of their relationship, nor consider it enough his business to speculate.

"An Elohite? Really?"

"They're nothing like Habbalah," he says, and, okay, maybe he does understand people, sometimes.

"Depends on the Habbalite." I fold my knees in, and lean out. Falling out this window can't hurt me. I don't know what here can, or will, though I've heard some explanations of the Pax Dei, which prevents--well, never mind what they said it did, back in Hell. Everyone seems to agree, grudgingly or otherwise, that there's not a lot of violence in Heaven. Not the literal physical kind. "What about Nik?"

"I have not met the Kyriotate," he says, "and couldn't speak to her feelings." He extends a wing a little nearer to me, like an apology, and sips his coffee. "As for Katherine, the last I heard from her foster parents, she was being exceedingly...adolescent."

"She must be. What. Fifteen now? Sixteen?" I don't know her real birthday, just what we put down on paperwork when we moved around together with the War. Judgment is made of the sort of people who would track that down. "Maybe I should send a note. I'm better with kids than teenagers."

"Many people are."

"Yeah, makes sense."

I watch people move in the plaza, and Penny drink his coffee.

My Heart's waiting for me, somewhere out there. I could find my way to it right now. I'm not quite ready for that yet. It's somewhere safe, check, let's leave it at that.

No wonder it's quiet. I mean. I can hear people talking down there, nothing specific, just that the sound is there, and the wind in the curtains, but there's nothing whispering in the back of my head. Nothing that says _keep running and don't get caught_ , no _burn it down and get away_ , not even the war drums of _stand your ground_ that I couldn't bear for a ten-minute stretch. It's like the sound of a fan that you've forgotten is buzzing until it turns off.

"What does the dissonance condition sound like?" I ask Penny. "Knowing how not to go wrong."

His head snakes nearer to me, which is all for the good. "I wouldn't have thought of it as having an aural component," he says. "I simply know, as I always have. I keep my promises."

"It seems," I say, "like I ought to be unable to sit here. What with what I am now."

"Do you have somewhere else you feel you ought to be?"

"Not specifically."

"Well, then," he says. "Do you have any inclination to break your promises?"

" _No._ "

"Well, then."

I lean sideways against him, and he lets me.

#

There's a stupid part of me--I call it this because it's obsessed with things that are way down the priority list right now--that worries about the fidgety side-effects of having picked up a shiny new Choir to replace my Band. I mean, Calabim have some issues, no two ways around it. Mandatory Discord is no one's friend, I've always been crap with electronics, even regular possessions decay around me, and then the way people assume I'm an idiot with a short temper... Disadvantages. Sure. But I'm _used_ to those. And so, yes, there's some bit of me that's been worrying that going Ofanite will make me some jittery distractible bastard who's even worse at laying down det cord on account of not being able to focus on one thing for more than five seconds at a stretch, or who can't lurk in shadows because lurking is right out if you need to be in constant motion.

So far it turns out that my own rotating self has got the constant motion covered, and nothing has seemed particularly urgent about leaving this office to explore the wonderful world of Heaven. And that's something. Especially as I know full well that Heaven is not Disneyland, however much the similarities do seem to crop up in places. The people who live here might incline towards being pleasant, but they're not all cast members working to give me a good time. People _live_ here, and any place that has more than one person living in it is bound to get some arguments breaking out, if only over who gets to hold the remote.

Speaking of unpleasant people. I sit up a little straighter and say to Penny, "I should send Sean a fruit basket or something. You have actual fruit here, right?"

"Yes," Penny says. "What would be in a fruit basket instead of actual fruit, if we didn't?"

"I'm not sure you want to know," I say, and leave the window seat to--I am not _pacing_ , I'm just checking out his office in more detail now that I'm not thinking so much about the view. "Okay. Here's the plan. I should check in with wherever they've got my Heart and figure out what I'm supposed to do with that--is there a quarantine or something?--and then see if there's, I don't know, some sort of organizational chart I'm in, and where I'm in it, so that I can. Do things. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to spend some time here as well, but it feels like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop." I shove my hands in my pockets. "Also, I'd like to find out if I can buy a pack of cigarettes somewhere around here."

"It's the Bazaar," Penny says, indicating with one excellent wing both the plaza out the window and a lot of the world beyond. "If it's the sort of thing it's ethical to own and sell, and not unbearably rare, I expect someone will own it and sell it to you."

"Unless there's a serious lung cancer problem in Heaven, or Judgment's passing laws about air quality, that probably means I'm go on the cigarettes. Great."

"Shall we go?" Penny asks, wings spreading wider.

"Yeah, sure."

He is smug, as only Seraphim can be, when he flicks a window open, and dives out.

_Not_ following feels wrong, the way it feels wrong when--never mind that. But it's nice to know that this whole ridiculous Wheel thing doesn't mean I have to fling myself out the window after him. I step up onto the windowsill, and watch Penny corkscrew lazily down toward the plaza ground. Gold-embossed leather binding, that man. It's a wonder he's not with Destiny.

(And wouldn't that have almost made sense, too? But I never would've trusted one of those, even the Seraphim.)

I step out of the window. I do not quite believe that gravity won't pull me down to the ground, but, hey, who knows what happens when a set of fiery rings hit plaza stones? And it turns out that the gravity doesn't care whether or not I believe in it; I can amble downwards in my own spiral, following the lines of a staircase that doesn't exist anywhere outside of my memory, until I reach the ground.

It's not like the Marches at all, and somehow that's the most unsettling thing yet.

(If I'm not careful, I will wonder why there's no jaguar pacing after me, his tail lashing behind him, and that'll be more unsettling still, but I can think about that later. A far away sort of later.)

"He's likely set your Heart in his tower," Penny says.

I know which building he's talking about, just from the directional tug of my Heart when I think about that thing, which therefore surely exists. And there's no confusion as to who the _he_ of that sentence would be. "It looks more like an office building," I say, "as towers go." The glass walls are dark green broken into geometric shapes by dusty gray lines, and I might not design a skyscraper the same way, but I don't dislike this one, either.

"The appearance has changed over the millennia," Penny says, "but the name tends to stick around." He sets out across the plaza, drifting a meter over ground level in deference to my pedestrian sensibilities. "Cigarettes first?"

"Checking in first. I don't exactly have cash on hand, and I'm not so desperate for a smoke that I'll pay a day's Essence for it." There's something odd about our movement through the crowds of buyers here, but I can't quite name it yet. Not just that it's easy to move forward without ever having to move around other pedestrians, but--oh. Yes. I'm used to having someone else at my side, who cuts through crowds with supernatural effect. Here we're just walking together while the crowd fails to be in our way. "Do you get much of a theft problem around here? I'm not seeing much that looks like security, and you're practically next door to the Wind."

"The Wind does tend to sweep through and redistribute physical items," Penny says, "but they're not malicious, and what's important can usually be recovered easily."

"Can't see how 'not malicious' would help if they redistributed something you really needed, just then."

"Mistakes happen," Penny says. "There's a great deal of flexibility in how possessions are handled in this place, and often a great deal of flexibility in the urgency of their location, if they're not already in a more secured position. But, yes, there are occasional problems. The Wind tends toward chaos, and disruption of patterns. It would hardly work properly if it never made people uncomfortable."

"Convenient, really, that they just make _other_ people uncomfortable."

"They get their share of educational discomfort," Penny says serenely. "One of the many services that Judgment provides within Heaven itself."

I hadn't thought of it that way before.

Kinda like it, though.

#

For all that I'm most of the way convinced that this one isn't going to kill me out of hand, I'm relieved that I'm not expected to meet up with my latest Superior to get my Heart. There is, instead, a highly efficient Kyriotate in the lobby of the tower that's not a tower (Heaven would be better served to name things something interesting and non-descriptive instead) who takes approximately three seconds to identify us, greet us, and direct us to the right office. 

We take a glass-walled elevator up a few dozen floors; this building is taller than it looked from the outside, and far more complex on the inside than I would've expected. Most of the floors we zip past look like generic offices, but we also pass through what looks to be a full-floor aquarium (I hope the elevator doesn't open onto that one) and twenty meters of rainforest, from dark floor to airy canopy.

"Break room?" I ask Penny, as we pass from the trees to another standard set of hallways and cubicles.

"I'm not sure," he says. "It's new since I was here last."

If Princes can make mountains and earthquakes, I suppose an Archangel can transplant a forest into his skyscraper if he damn well feels like it. And I can't disapprove of his elevator setup; clear glass makes me feel a lot less trapped than these things usually do.

The elevator finally lets us out into a floor of dark wood paneling and oil portraits on the wall. It's a bit like walking into a gentleman's club--the kind with cigars, not strippers--if the gentlemen in question were all angels. It's hard to get a good look at an Ofanite spinning through the sky, but the portraits tell me that they come in all varieties you can make out of the basic Ring and Fire components. Spoked wheels and chain links and knots and simple circles, on the portraits I see on the walk down the hall. Kyriotates are just as distinct, once you make them focus a little.

Malakim are all dark blurs, as far as I can tell. The least distinctive Choir. Maybe they seem to have more variety when you get to know them, but I'm not holding my breath.

I am not surprised to find that the person we're meeting in this place is a Mercurian, or that she has a pool table in her office.

"Hel _lo_ , folks," she says, stepping around the table she was sitting at to offer us a hand. I can't help but think of Ash for a moment, though she looks nothing like him; as Mercurians go, she looks like she could drop-kick a pony. I end up shaking her hand, vessel-seeming good enough for that, and there's a flash of the same from Penny as he follows suit. "I'm Orlaith, you're Leo and Penny nee Peniel, everyone's here. Let's get this party started. Anyone want a seat?"

I glance to Penny to see if he looks like he desperately wants to sit, and with no indication of such, say, "Not particularly. Where's the party?"

"The party," Orlaith says, with a Vanna White sort of gesture towards the table, "is right here. The Boss thought you'd be by soon to get started. So! Let me get the checklist and we'll have you up and running faster than you can deliver an informed critique of Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_."

"That," I say, "would take me at least three hours, if you wanted it in standard essay format. Not counting reading the damn thing in the first place."

"See? So I'm likely to be on time." She waves a conciliatory hand toward Penny. "Don't get your panties in a twist, Most Holy, I _am_ taking this seriously. It's exciting! It's been fifteen years since I got to handle any new-redeemed checklists, and they've revamped half the details since then. I mean, the last time I did this, I had an actual clipboard." What she has now is a smartphone in a gold case, an electric blue lightning bolt emblazoned on the back. Either she's a big fan of Harry Potter, or Lightning still produces all the tech around here.

"I am a fan of the clipboards," Penny says.

"Well, we still keep the kids on them, don't we? It's nice and focused, lends itself well to passing around physical items--which some kids have trouble thinking about as significant, if they're too used to it all being electronic and this almost post-scarcity thing we have going on here--and it makes all the traditionalists settle down a bit when they were just about to get some cane-waving going on. Step one: Heart." She takes a box from the table, and offers it to me. "All yours. You've got a housing allotment a few steps down the list, if you want to go to that office next and find a place for it, but the last new angel I had through here wanted to store theirs in with the friend who they'd followed home. It's not a bad place to start while you're getting a feel for the area."

It's the kind of box that you'd be hard pressed to mass-produce: inlaid wood and a low-gloss finish, like someone in a woodworking class took an assignment to make an openable cube and just went wild with it. I crack open the lid long enough to discover that here in Trade, at least, Hearts are crystal shot with gold sparkles. It's ostentatious, as an ornament. It loves me and calls to me and tells me that together we'll do what we promised. It's _part_ of me, and I hope to never break it the way I've had Hearts break before.

I close the lid. "Heart. Check."

She whips out a smartphone just like hers, and offers it over. "Phone."

"I'm not very good with electronics."

"You'll learn," she says. "Your file says you're smart, and we have you on a pretty intuitive OS. Mind, it's not an artifact, so it'll only keep you in touch with people while you're in Heaven, but unless you go into the Volcano itself, or deep into Stone territory--"

"That's damn unlikely."

"--the reception is excellent. So there you go." She ticks another item off on her own phone. "Oh, here we are, housing allotment. We're going mostly virtual with those now, so just check your inbox whenever, I have it sent. You may want to take a look at your finances, too; and if you want to deposit any Essence into your account to have some to work with for small purchases, there's a kiosk right in the lobby. Not all the vendors accept tap-and-pay yet, but we're working on coverage, and most of the people selling anything standard will. It's mostly the angels who saw the stars spring into exist who refuse to take anything but promises of significant deeds in exchange for their wares, right?"

"Even some of them have caught up with the modern age," Penny says. _Opinion_ , but based on observed evidence. I keep forgetting that I'm even speaking this language, hearing it, until Penny says something and I realize how perfectly native it is to him. He can be more or less precise freely, because there's not even a risk of people thinking he's speaking pure seraphic truth when he's just stating a preference or hope.

"When you took a few billion years to form your first opinion, you can be excused for taking a few thousand more to notice any given tech upgrade." Orlaith has deposited the phone with me, and there's no escaping that now. I set it on top of the box. "Next up, cards."

"Cards?" If there's mandatory poker in Heaven, I sure hadn't heard about that one before.

"Cards," she repeats, and gives me a stack of...greeting cards? Or the kind that people use for writing thank-you notes. Nice white paper, the kind people send out wedding invites on, and each stamped on the front with a gold-embossed symbol of the archetypal Ofanite. "The Boss has mentioned, in that way he has, that while it's not _obligatory_ , you might want to think about writing to the people in Heaven who you've encountered while on the other side. You know. 'Hi, thought you should know I'm an Ofanite now, sorry about that thing I did that time, please don't stab me if you see me on the corporeal, kisses, Leo.' That kind of thing."

"Really," Penny says, and the feathers all along the spines of his wings do ruffle up when he's annoyed. It's adorable. I probably shouldn't tell him that.

"Forgiving isn't forgetting," Orlaith says. "Sometimes it's best to clear the air."

"I don't know the names of most of the people I, uh, ran into," I say, "much less how to find them."

"We've compiled a partial list, based on our information! It's in your email. As you remember more, you can send us what details you have on the incident, and we'll try to locate the appropriate injured party to send an apology to."

I stare at the stack of cards she's so helpfully put on top of my box. "I'm going to need more cards."

"There's an app for that. You can reorder at any time."

"Do I also get to send cards to the people who injured _me_ while we were on opposite sides?"

"Don't see why not," Orlaith says, with a cheery shrug. "No one's obliged to forgive you on a personal level, even if they're not allowed to pursue grudges in any serious manner now that you're on our side, but you're not obliged to forgive them either. Use your best judgment."

Penny eyes me sidelong. "Shall we compose a form letter for the Malakim?"

"...maybe."

#

About an hour later, give or take a round of pool, we escape that office with a bag of things that I apparently need as an angel. An Ofanite of Trade. This job comes with _equipment_ , and that's not unprecedented--there was a uniform for the War, among other things--but it's still a bit. I don't know. It's not how Theft worked, and while I didn't start in Theft, it's what I'm still most used to. All I got allocated in Theft was a Djinn.

Probably still in Trauma.

Not thinking about that.

It is, I swear, a shorter walk back to the office than the reverse, though we take the same route. Which gets us into a discussion of relative distance and time and the ways in which Heaven finds static physics about as obligatory as Hell does. Which makes sense, both of them being on the celestial plane, but I had vaguely assumed that this was a function of Princes being jerks. And maybe it is; the optional physics of Heaven seem a lot more tuned towards making things convenient for the inhabitants, but that may just be a factor of Archangels liking to play nice with their employees and clientele. Especially when in the territory of the most commercial of all Archangels.

"It's not something I've studied," Penny says, "though it comes up occasionally in lectures and such. You could probably find some serious research on the topic through Lightning or Destiny."

"I'd prefer the latter," I say, while trying to figure out where in this office to stow my Heart. The desk, being designed for a Seraph, doesn't really have a footwell to shove the box into, and setting it on the window seat is just asking for hilarious accidents. I settle for stowing it on the top shelf of a bookcase that's mostly holding decorative knick-knacks. Penny may appreciate the classics, but he seems to have taken them digital by now. "They seem less likely to hold a grudge."

"Likely," Penny says. "Did you do anything particularly unfortunate to Lightning recently?"

"Not--um. Let me think." I sit down in an office chair that's designed for human-shaped people, and spin it around in a circle. "Little bits here and there recently, nothing big or murderous since that time with Industrial Espionage, and it's not like I did any of the Lightning murder in that case. Got away with a case of tech data and some bruising, by and large. Shit. I guess I'd better send them a note too." I hook my arms over the back of the chair, with my chin on top, and watch Penny that way. He's set himself in a loose circle around me, so if I keep the chair spinning, well, he's always there. I kinda like that. "When does someone sit me down and ask for all the secrets of my time in Hell?"

"We're not Judgment," Penny says, more mild than indignant on this one. "Nor Revelation, for all that we appreciate their help, and they would likely appreciate the consideration if you sent some information their way. And we're not War, to have those sorts of matters foremost in mind. If you think of something that's relevant, we expect you'll let someone appropriate know."

I spin around to look him in the eyes. (I think I could see in all directions, as a Wheel, if I let myself, and I am not going to think about that much yet either.) "And?"

"And," Penny says, "some people might be annoyed if you didn't pass on information that was particularly useful, if there was a way for you to know it could've been useful."

"I was expecting something more...formalized."

"If you came from Greed," Penny says, "I expect there would be. Or one of the Words more inclined towards particularly dangerous projects. Death? But by and large Theft is seen as...more irritant than opponent, through most of Heaven."

"I think that's a mistake."

"Quite possibly it is." He shrugs, a ripple all through the upper half of his body. "Would it do much good for your peace of mind if we did sit you down for days of going over every detail of whatever you've done in service to any Word of Hell?"

"...no."

"Well, then. We can leave confession to the Catholics."

I spin around in another circle. It's the right kind of quiet in here. Wind in the curtains, but not the kind of wind that'll steal your shirt. "So long as we're not getting to that," I start, and then stop because there's a knock on the door, which only goes to show that even in Heaven not everyone has perfect timing. And a good thing too; that'd be just creepy.

"What," I say to Penny, as he flows toward the door, "no cameras feeding to your phone that'll tell you exactly who's out there?"

"That seemed rather too surveillance state," he says, and opens the door. "Luna. Do come in. I'd meant to send you a message soon."

"Word got around," she says. She is a Mercurian. I mean. I _knew_ that, I honestly did, but I knew that as a hypothetical sort of thing, and it's different than with Eder, who was so clearly always meant to be a Kyriotate, so much that becoming one again just seemed natural. A return to form. Luna has the exact same face she did in the Marches when she was looking human, behind that mask. The only different is the halo of light and the feathered wings, and the way she stands.

"Hello," I say, digging a heel into the floor so that my chair stops spinning. "It's been a while." Inane but true. I don't know quite what to make of her. It's clearly _her_ , even from the little time I met her--what, a handful of hours?--with all her determination radiating out. The kind of fire that I can still care about. But. 

Oh.

It's been more than half her life since she last thought anyone she was talking to might hurt her. No wonder she stands differently.

"It has been," she says. She draws in a deep breath, hands curled at her sides. "Can I yell at you? Or would that be terrible right now? I know you just got here, so it's probably a bad time, but you're here, and...I've been thinking about this. For a long time. Almost since we left."

"Yelling's not going to hurt me," I say, though I have to pick a particularly specific and limited word for _hurt_ so that the sentence comes out. It's a lot like the type of hurt that can't happen to her here. "Go ahead."

Penny rests his head on my shoulder like he disagrees with my assessment. But he's not going to object. He doesn't. Someone asked, and I answered, and he won't tell anyone that I meant it differently or that my opinion's wrong when I'm speaking about my own mind.

How strange.

"How _could_ you?" she says, and takes another breath before the rest is a rush. "How could you take so long, when you knew people were waiting, and you knew about this place enough to send me, and you knew just how to get here exactly, and then you didn't come! Over and over again! He's been waiting so long, and I've been waiting so much of my whole life for you to finally get here. How _could_ you, Leo? I don't understand."

I would like to say _It's not my fault_ or _You'll understand when you're older,_ but even I don't think either of those is true. I don't have a good answer for this at all: it's not what I thought she'd be upset about.

"I was afraid," I say. "And I was in love."

"Love should've brought you here," she says. Fierce as ever. Now that's the kid who I took away from Althea.

"I can be in love with more than one person at a time, Luna. Still am. Some of them aren't on this side of the war." I sit back and scrub at my hair. "For what it's worth, I am sorry to have kept you all in suspense."

"At least you finally stopped being scared," she says. And now she sounds _shaky_ , so I get up and push the chair her way. She sits down with a soft thump. "That's something."

"I never stopped being afraid. I got more afraid of other things, and more angry, and..." I don't know how to make this sound good, either. "I don't like being forced into a corner. It makes me contrary."

"I didn't know you could contrary your way to Heaven," Luna says.

Penny slips a loop widely around my feet. "You might be surprised at how often that works."


	2. An Interlude, In Which Almost As Many Cards Are Delivered As Have Been Written

Dear Sean,

You're still an asshole and I don't like you, much less trust you. But you came through this time and I owe you for it. I expect you'll call that favor in at some point when it's wildly inconvenient to me, because that's the sort of person you are. At least this time I'm prepared.

Send me the names of your friends who helped, would you?

#

Dear Joaquin,

You might or might not be pleased to know that the Calabite who shoved you into a car and then into a Sword Tether parking lot last week is now in Heaven. (You can probably figure out the lack of Calabite status accordingly.) The stiff-lipped Malakite I talked to over at Swordie central got me your name and address. With any luck you've been able to pick up that Role again, and for what it's worth, I can tell you that we wouldn't have even known about you if it weren't for the lousy friends you had. So maybe hang out with those people less and you won't get jumped by demons again? It's worth a try.

I'd apologize for what my partner did, but it's not like I've ever been able to stop him. It might make you feel better to know that he hit Trauma, so you came out slightly ahead on that equation. Good luck with that whole Destiny thing. Seems like a nice gig, with the books and all.

#

~~Dear Vaina,~~

~~Luna probably already told you~~

#

Dear Johannes,

Luna seems awfully fond of you. We should meet some time. I realize that as an Elohite you're obliged to be objective and logical and not let emotions get in the way of your decision-making process, so keep in mind that if you _logically_ cause hurt to Luna I will quite emotionally cause hurt to you. Something to factor into your decision-making process!

#

~~Dear Nik~~

#

Dear Tancred,

I'm told by your ~~asshole supervisor~~ commander within the Sword that I met you in a vault not long ago. Whatever that artifact is, I can't say I'm entirely sorry for breaking it, because that's part of what got me here. But I do regret the unnecessary stabbing. That was a really messy job and if we'd planned it better we would've been in and out before you ever knew we were there.

I'm not really sure why you didn't stab me when you had the chance yourself, but I appreciate the fact that I'm here now instead of in Trauma in Stygia. So thanks for that.

#

Dear Rosa,

Thanks for handling the Song-crazed Seraph I dropped off at your door. You did a great job with that, especially for a human. Sorry about not sticking around longer to give more explanation; it seemed like a bad idea at the time.

#

Dear (insert name here),

This is a note to apologize for (robbing/raiding/burglarizing/bugging/destabilizing/setting on fire) (you/your Tether/your residence/your possessions) on (date). I have since reformed and joined Trade, where I am told my upcoming duties will involve a lot less of that, and none against Heavenly employees and allies. If you wish to file (an official note of forgiveness/charges/a request for restitution), please contact my case worker through any of the methods detailed below.

#

~~Dear Nikostratos,~~

~~You've probably heard by now that~~

#

Dear Emmanuel,

I am informed, after delivering a description of a previous incident involving a Bright Lilim of Lightning, that you are almost certainly the individual I encountered. Thank you for not shooting me in that stupid botched thing with the War. If you'll pass my best regards on to Kai as well, I'd appreciate that; I would've sent them a card directly, but I'm told they don't get back to their office to check physical mail very often.

#

Dear Kai,

Just so you know, that nice Mercurian who helped you hide a body in a dumpster right before the really noisy incident with that summoning tech and the War was actually me. Same person you ran into at the incident itself, being much more an actual Calabite at the time. Thought you should know if you ever get around to checking this box.

#

Dear Vaina,

I'm sorry about that mess in the Marches. I did the best I could under the constraints I thought I was working under at the time. Thank you for taking care of Luna. I'll stop by your office some time, if you still want me to.

#

Dear Sada,

This is identical to the card I'm sending to Kearney; I'm told you're partners. I'm supposed to apologize to angels I caused trouble to back when I was a demon. We ran into each other in Seattle; I was invisible at the time, you were torturing a demon you had locked up in a house.

Well. I'm not apologizing. That kid hadn't done anything worth hurting him over, and you couldn't have done a better job of convincing some poor under-Force child with trust issues that Heaven's made up of people just as bad as anyone in Hell. Do you think he's ever going to believe a sincere offer from this direction now? When you did that to him, and it's Hell who'd give him some sympathy?

Try to think long-term a little more often instead of jumping straight into us-versus-them, you idiots, unless you're _trying_ to help Hell with its constant loyalty and employee retainment issues.

#

Dear Orlaith,

You may be getting some annoyed messages back from people I've blocked. I've included a preliminary list of names below, and I'll send you more as I send out cards likely to get that kind of response. Good luck.

#

Dear Tess,

Definitely an Elohite, huh? Maybe I should've guessed sooner, because you always did play dirty. Since soothing hurt feelings isn't really a thing you'd care about, this is just to acknowledge that, yes, you were right. All along. Useful data for future reference.

#

Dear Orlaith,

Do we have any information at all on a Wordbound Balseraph working for Secrets--yeah, I know, a tough call already--who goes by the name of Inez? I was told her Word is Hidden Doors, but I'm damn sure it's bigger than that. Maybe something as big as Illusions. I'm not sure where to even start looking into this.

#

Dear Orlaith,

Of course I could email you. But you gave me all these damn cards. I'm going to keep using them.

Besides, the relievers get really excited when you get them to carry one. Apparently they haven't had as much message-running to do since more than half the Words of Heaven decided to get with the program about email.

#

Dear Sean,

Remember that thing in the Tether? Where you used me to blackmail Penny? I'm still holding a grudge. And you haven't gotten back to me with those damn names. Do I need to wander into the Groves and ask people myself, or what? You're a Mercurian. _Link people socially_. It's what you _do_.

#

Dear Eder,

I checked with the Destiny folks while I was looking for this one Seraph (please don't ask) and they said they have entire books of collected songs and stories and poetry from people who are...well, lost to the corporeal, but not lost to Heaven. If you ever want to meet up there, maybe we could do a poetry exchange. I think you'd like Emily Dickinson. They must have translations on hand.

#

Dear Luna,

Much as I appreciate the thought, I'm apparently still three giant burning interlocking wheels of fire, did I mention the burning? So clothes shopping isn't high on the list. But stop by for coffee some time. Just send a message ahead to make sure I'm in. I've been running around a lot to track down all these people I'm supposed to write.

#

To Whom It May Concern In Judgment:

I filed an information request days ago. I filled out actual forms on actual damn paper. (Is it blessed paper here? Are we blessing the paper now? Maybe we could bless a computer instead, see if that gets things done a little faster.) I'm not asking for state secrets, I'm just asking for a point of contact so that I can write some kid a letter. What's taking so long?

#

Dear Hiroko,

There's no good way to break this to you, especially in what's probably not the world's most secure form of message delivery, so I'll be blunt: that Impudite of Lust who you're seducing to the light side of the Force? It's going the other way around. She set you up to trust her, to get a promotion out of it.

I don't think it's worth stabbing anyone over. But you're going to get fucked in a much less literal way if you don't back off soon. Maybe find a way to cut that connection before your boss finds out? Good luck.

#

Dear Sean,

You are the worst at being a Mercurian. Send me a few names already.

#

~~Dear Nik,~~

~~I'm sorry that I sent you to Judgment without telling you, but I'm not sorry. I needed you to get back here where you belonged. I've met what happens when a Kyriotate doesn't and it shouldn't happen to you. Please tell me that~~

#

To Whom It May Concern,

It's none of your business, so stop asking. And that's the fucking Truth.

#

Dear Dolores,

Sorry about stealing those Greed contracts from your Tether. I don't think it made any real difference to anyone, but I'm told it's upsetting to your human people there, and I'm working on learning proper regret for unnecessary discomfort to good people.

I'm also sorry about the part where your church got a traumatized Cherub redelivered without warning, but you have to admit it was better than the alternative.

#

Dear Ruhamah,

I can't figure out if this is actually ironic or not. It's not quite an unfortunate coincidence, either. But here we are, both Ofanim now, and I should probably apologize for the run-ins I've had with you over the years. (Two that I know of, but who's counting?) Honestly, you pretty much had it coming the first time around, but I admit that the second time there was some overkill going on. Mistakes were made.

#

Dear Hakupha,

I would as soon not write this note, and I imagine you would as soon not receive it. (Penny tells me that I should work on temporizing less, and spend less time hedging around what I mean to say. He's a Seraph, so of course he would say that.) All the same your name was on the first list I was given, and it's acquired bold face and blinking the longer I put off writing this to you. So let's both consider this mandatory official correspondence, rather than anything personal.

You don't like me. I've never liked you. We were on opposite sides of the war, so it stands to reason. I don't expect this to change just because I'm working for Heaven now. Frankly, I'm never going to be comfortable with the concept of a Cherub who can harm their attuned, so you've got that working against you right there, and I have no idea how you feel about angels with backgrounds as spotty as mine.

Moving on.

I wasn't the one who did anything terrible to you. I was the one who got you out of there. These are both perfectly true statements, and entirely lies. I was the one who set you up for what happened. I suggested the conclusion in a moment of panic, and both of us were lucky that my Prince decided to take the suggestion instead of making things worse because I'd dared to offer it.

Maybe you've moved on long ago. I don't know how these things work in Heaven, or among Judgment. I may be spending a great deal of time on what's one of many peculiar, annoying incidents in your past. But it made quite the impression on me, and I'm writing these notes, apologies or otherwise, as much for my own moral improvement as for the sake of improving anyone else's life. So, sure, I'm dwelling on this a bit.

I'm sorry I did it. I don't know that I would make the decision any other way, given the same situation. But that's one of the interesting things about life: sometimes the best choice available at the time is still a bad one, and worth regretting.

#

Dear Orlaith,

If I ask you to look up info on a particular arms dealer I used to know, with some helpful information on how to track her down, how much chance is there that this is going to turn into trouble for her? Because I'm curious, but not enough to screw her over by looking. She only betrayed me the once, and she didn't really want to.

#

Dear Sean,

_Names_ , you asshole.

#

Dear Iris,

I should've taken you up on that offer you made the first time I stayed at your Tether. Except if I'd stayed then, there are people I never would've met and helped. But there are also people I never would've met and hurt, and who knows what good I would've done working for Heaven starting years and years ago?

Never mind the past. But you were right. And more patient than I deserved. Thank you for taking care of Nik.

#

Dear Ling,

You saved my life once. Or possibly my soul. Not sure which, but either way, I owe you. Call in that favor any time.

#

Dear Orlaith,

There's no way I'm taking the time to track down the names of _all_ the Malakim in that building. Even aside from having to add in the ones Regan and I shot before that point, the multiple vessel issue really confuses things, and I can't say I'm especially sorry. Could I just post a general insincere apology to a message board somewhere, and call it a day?

#

~~Dear Nikostratos,~~

~~I was hoping that I could stop by and~~

#

Dear Abbess,

I'm told that Nikostratos, Kyriotate of the Sword, is currently residing at your monastery under orders of restricted movement. I meant to just stop by and see her, but apparently you have a gender-limited thing there? Can't really say I understand that, but it's fair enough. Rules are rules and the place is yours. So could you just see if something could be arranged so that I could say hello, instead of sending notes? I think some conversations are better had in person.

#

Dear Nik,

I'm here. If you're still willing to talk to me, let's talk.

#

Dear Ash,

I'd say "You would not believe how expensive it was to send this to you," but you've probably got the whole process itemized and the fee structure laid out in front of you right now. Suffice to say I'd probably start doing something to earn money soon, because I borrowed from friends to make this happen.

I didn't pick the design on the card myself, but, hey, it gets to the point, doesn't it? And I wanted to let you know about this officially, if not exactly in person, given the news at hand. You've probably heard already through your own sources--you've always been the best-connected person I knew, when it came to hot new information about what mistakes people are making in their lives--but here it is confirmed. I've sold out. Swapped to the other side. Joined up with the people who promised me a steady paycheck and a few other perks.

I'm going to miss you. Honest truth. (You can't see the Seraph nodding beside me, so you'll have to take my word for it.) If it were up to me, I'd just stop by to chat books and morality like always, and tell you entertaining stories about the new place, but somehow I don't think we'd get a lot of approval on this from any direction. And the last thing I want to do is get you in trouble with the jackbooted thugs of Hell, right? Much less get some wound-up Malakim with insufficiently gradated morality systems pointed your way. So this is pretty secure and pretty final. You can swear up and down to anyone who comes asking that you haven't seen me, you heard the news, and you're far too bright a Lilim to get involved with a traitor like me.

The truth has never worked particularly well when the Game gets touchy about something, but at least it makes the stories easier to keep straight.

I've included a USB stick. It has some books on it that I think you might like. If you want to be paranoid, do go ahead and stick it in a clean machine with no way to talk to the network, but the angel who set it up for me swears up and down that there's nothing malicious or spy-like on it, which is pretty convincing when said in angelic. You might _also_ make a few dollars for yourself on the side selling a few of those texts to the right collectors; it's not like they can authenticate any of it, since it's not a manuscript, but I know there will be people on your side who appreciate a few good lost works. I know I've been appreciating them lately.

This is getting long and I'm being charged by the gram, so I might as well wrap it up here. Have a good life, Ash. Read some good books. Keep your head down when the shooting starts and don't get tangled up in anything political. I like you just the way you are, and wouldn't ask you to change for the world.


	3. In Which I Take A Walk

"I just don't think it's appropriate to threaten my friends," Luna says. She's taken over the window seat, while I sit and spin idly in the desk chair. (The one designed for people like me, and not the perch that I've not yet seen Penny use; he may be all Seraph, but apparently it's still easier to manifest vessel form to get the typing done than to hunt and peck with a tail-tip.) "And I don't want to hear that 'It's not a threat' thing again, because, come on, that was a _threat_."

"He'll be fine," I say. "Pax Dei, all that. And now he has more information as to why he should be a good friend."

"He would be a good friend _anyway_."

"So long as it was objectively useful to him."

Luna is too old to stomp her feet and throw a tantrum, but exactly the right age to deploy an adolescent eyeroll. "You can't expect everyone to act like a Cherub, and you shouldn't expect everyone to be so--ruthless. I mean, we're Trade! He could always make promises about being a good friend, and then it'd be even more objective for him to keep them."

"Well, has he?" I stop my spin where I'm facing her. "Promised. To you."

"He doesn't need to," Luna says. "Not everything has to be contract-level solid for it to be trustworthy. If you'd take some time to listen to people, instead of--" She snaps her mouth shut as a reliever flings itself over her shoulder. Some five-Force kid, or thereabout, already trailing red sparks in its wake. That probably makes it someone who's set its heart on Ofanite, rather than a reliever of Fire; anyone that committed to the Word wouldn't roam this far without excellent reason.

"Leo," it gasps, breathless in a way that means _I am very excited_ and not _I am having trouble getting oxygen_ , given the physical requirements of bodies in Heaven, "there's a Cherub of Stone looking for you! He says he knows you! I said I'd come see if you were here!" So it's someone I've met before, given its address, but I don't know the relievers in the area well enough to name any of them yet. I must've talked to a hundred over the last...few days. Several days. I have deliberately not been watching the calendar. Brings up too many questions.

I drop to my feet (imaginary, yes, but that's beside the point), and ask Luna, "Who's Stone still on the outs with? I mean, besides us. Flowers?"

"That one's more the other direction," Luna says, though she has to pause to remember.

"I still need to go deliver an apology to Iris and the rest in person," I say, and check my phone. Penny's off doing corporeal contract work for hours yet. "Do you know how to get there quickly?"

"Sure," Luna says, standing as well, while the reliever orbits the both of us like a winged comet that periodically says _wheeeee_. "Want me to show you the way?"

"You could go tell that Cherub," I say to the reliever, "that we're out of the office. But do you think you could go do a few laps around the building before you tell him?"

"I can do those _so fast_ ," the reliever says, and flings itself back out the window.

I step up to the windowsill myself. Wouldn't want to run into the wrong sort of person in the hallways. "Help me find a quick path to the Groves, would you?"

"... _Leo_ ," she says, and even in this language I can't tell if she's scandalized or admiring me. Maybe both. "The Groves are no place to avoid a Stony."

"Then maybe he won't think to look there immediately. Come on," I say, and step out into the sky. "I want to annoy Sean."

On which note she's willing to follow me, spreading white wings behind her. She hasn't forgotten what I said to her boyfriend (who she's not calling a boyfriend, but come on, it's pretty obvious), but she's willing to drop the topic for, oh, at least a few minutes.

I'm three fiery rings rolling across the sky, following an invisible track, each one linked to both the others. My shoes pound across the air, silent as I could never make them on the corporeal. Maybe I'm running and maybe I'm spinning, and maybe this is all reified metaphor for some even less comprehensible true reality of the celestial plane. Doesn't matter. The window of Penny's office shrinks behind us into a coin-sized spot, a dot, indistinguishable in the building, the building hidden by others, as the trees ahead of us spin themselves up from ambitious broccoli into plants (at least in this metaphor that I mistake for the reality of Heaven) larger than any building designed on Earth.

Sometimes I want to make proper sense of this place, but that'd probably lead to me walking into the Halls of Progress and never walking out again. Not what I want to do with my life.

"Why are we bothering Sean?" Luna asks me, wings beating the same rhythm as the rise and fall of her chest. The wings are irrelevant to flight, just as air is irrelevant to the continuing stability of our Forces here, but we do like our habits.

"Would you take 'for fun' as an answer?"

"I would," Luna says, "but you're really good about getting around the thing where you can't lie in Heaven." She considers me directly as we move, without any need to watch where she's going. You just don't run into people by accident in Heaven. "Do you think Penny would approve?"

And this is one of the reasons I keep talking to Luna, who has shouted at me on five separate occasions (only once about clothing) and has grandiose plans for saving the world, when I could've just been glad she was fine and moved on. When she asks that question, it's not loaded. She really wants to know.

"Penny's a Seraph who works on the corporeal. He'd understand." I shrug to her (flames curling her direction across the rim of a wheel) as I walk, impossibly distance-eating strides through the air. "I bet if you ran the numbers, you'd find that Seraphim make it down to the corporeal in smaller percentages than any other Choir, even with the way Judgment's mandatory Most Holy thing skews the results. The pure truth doesn't mix well with corporeal life."

"So what do they do?" Luna asks. "In your experience." She's started a curve down toward the ground at the edge of the trees, rather than continuing over the treetops. Good. I don't want to deal with a bunch of idiot Windies, and they infest the upper levels.

"They don't mix," I say, "or they get Roles where perfect truth is acceptable most of the time, and learn how to work around it the rest of the time. They get really good at talking about inconsequential things. Or not talking as much. Or maybe they get handlers who run a lot of interference."

"I wonder what it's like for relievers who fledge Seraph," Luna says, "if they were doing Role-building work down there. I guess they wouldn't turn Seraph if they weren't already uncomfortable with all the pretending, and...if you're deep enough in the Role, it is true, isn't it?"

"Depends on who you ask. Most language isn't angelic. It's a lot of...perspective." My feet touch down on the ground. "I'm Leo. Truth. If someone's been calling me Leah for long enough that I answer to it automatically, is it truth that I'm that? Can I honestly say I'm an architect when I haven't designed a building in years? Depends on how the person speaking is defining the words. Corporeal languages aren't as twisty as Helltongue, but they're vastly more ambiguous than angelic."

She drops lightly to the grass. There shouldn't be grass beneath trees these vast, nor any sunlight down here, but the woods here aren't dark, even if they're deep. You wouldn't catch a sleigh pausing between these trees, or Robert Frost watching a bird flit between the trees that stand like prison bars against the white of the snow. What I've seen of Heaven's idea of nature so far tends towards summer in Western Europe--not that I could really tell a British tree from a Russian one, if it came to that--but I'm told Jordi's Savannah, despite the name, picks up most of the missing environmental locations. Maybe if you travel far out enough to the edges of that, you can even find the plants that predate humanity, and life forms hanging out in mammal-unfriendly atmospheres. If animals make it to Heaven, and they grow plants here, surely they keep track of the history of that planet everyone's so obsessed with.

"You get this expression," Luna says, "when you're thinking about something. What is it this time?"

"Environmental conservation," I say. "You've studied corporeal animals, right?"

"Some," Luna says. She's confident enough to lead the way forward between the trees, and the grass does give way to leaf debris and dirt. (Nothing dies, in Heaven, so why do leaves bother to fall from the trees? Or are these eternal leaves that have always been lying on the ground?) "I started so that I could describe Cherubim, because it sounds funny if you say 'Oh, that Cherub with the short arms and big legs and long tail' when everyone else would say 'that kangaroo-Cherub' instead."

"So you know about species going extinct."

"Sure."

"If it's still in Heaven," I say, "is it really extinct?"

Luna stuffs her hands in her pockets--bad habit, but I do it myself, and find I'm mirroring the gesture as I walk beside her--while she thinks about this. "Sure," she says at last. "They're still dead down on the corporeal. Extinct is meaningful in that sense; it's only talking about their corporeal connection. Like the way a blessed soul here isn't _not dead_ in that sense, just because the soul lives on. But what does that have to do with conservation?"

"I'm trying to figure out if it matters whether or not the environment gets razed if it's still here in Heaven. Matters in the abstract sense of right and wrong, not in the 'gosh it would be nice if we had some oxygen-producing trees around here' sense."

"It matters when people die," Luna says. "Even if the soul lives on. So it makes sense to me that it matters when a jungle dies, too, even if we have another jungle up here."

"We _do_ have some jungles, right?"

"Oh, sure. If you keep going this way far enough--" She waves a hand off towards our left. "--you start hitting rainforest, and then I think most of the jungles are Jordi's, but not all of them. And Vaina says that when Oannes was still here, his Grotto had this whole Mediterranean vibe going on one end, that transitioned over to something arctic on the far side. I didn't know you were that into nature stuff."

"I'm not. I just wonder."

A few relievers pause near us as we walk, but dash onward along their original trajectories when we don't call them down for anything. It's strange to see the ones that must be seven or eight Forces strong, still unset in their Choirs at a size where a demon would be locked into their Band already. Angels don't seem to do adolescence; they leap from childhood to adulthood, with none of that shaky seven-Force stage where they're kicking at all the boundaries of the world with their new-found resonances.

"Heaven's a good place for thinking," Luna says. An adolescent angel, if there ever was one, though I wouldn't call her moody or rebellious. Just caught in that stage between dependence and decision. Too young to be entirely her final self, too old to leave those big decisions to other people.

"Not such a great place for acting," I say, and get a wry smile from her. So I do know how to follow the line of her thinking. "Unless you're doing administration and management, or research that doesn't require corporeal testing, or filing, or support work, or interaction with the blessed souls who aren't trying to get back to the corporeal..."

"Lots of Mercurians in that last set," Luna says. "Counseling and stuff. It's not really where I see myself heading." She frowns suddenly at the trees around us. "Where _are_ we heading? I thought you wanted to find Sean."

"Yeah, that asshole will show up eventually if he's here. But I was waiting for the Cherub who's been shadowing us to drop down and say hello. No reason to interrupt the conversation until then."

Luna jerks her gaze upward just as the Cherub plummets downward. It's doing a fine ninja-fox impression, bouncing from limb to limb of each tree and ricocheting off the trunks when it _could_ just drop to the ground directly, as the impact wouldn't even hurt. "No one ever looks up," it says, sounding rather more pleased than aggrieved by this failure in others. (Angelic is precise: _no one_ is explicitly hyperbole, the whole statement is opinion based on observation, and it makes me miss Helltongue, where I'd just state the whole lie cheerfully as if it were complete truth.) "Welcome back, small stuff! Welcome to your friends, you wanna bother Vassals again? Wanna find Riccarda? Wanna go talk to the Mercurian with the ever-so-nice--" It wings backward at Luna's expression, cackling, and its tail swings below it like a metronome. "Or combat practice? Look, he's got a vessel, we could do a thing! With punching! Good fun, good practice." It darts its paws about by way of example. "Two against one, you'll still learn!"

"I'm waiting for that asshole to show up," I tell the Cherub. The translation isn't precise, but the sentiment is the same; whoever said angelic couldn't be rude never tried speaking it.

"Gotta narrow that down," the fox says, with a broad gesture for the Groves as a whole. "What kind of asshole are you looking for? Tried sending a reliever? Don't call them that to the relievers, makes the littles confused, but probably they oughta learn some time, huh?"

"Mercurian. Vassal. Bad with keeping promises, good with the violence, his name's not really Sean."

"That one!" The fox laughs, displaying sharp white teeth to the both of us. "He's not so bad, not if you want quick fun, or quick violence."

"Some Mercurians talk things out," Luna says.

"Yeah, where's the fun of that? Lemme see. Not gonna go track him down for you, you can't learn without doing some footwork, mm? Or wheelwork, whatever, you get the metaphor, and I'm no reliever anymore." The Cherub clicks its teeth together, like a Mercurian might snap their fingers. "Tell ya what, boys and girls, how about I explain how to get there, you two get some practice in orienteering--"

"And here you see a condescending Warrior in its native habit," I say to Luna. "Absolutely convinced that we want to be _tested_ on something by a passing stranger when we could just ask a reliever for help if we were in that much of a fucking hurry. Is this a Word thing or a Cherub thing?"

The fox-Cherub snaps its jaws shut, and eyes me steadily. "And you're critiquing his manners, huh?"

"Not his _manners_ ," I say, while Luna quietly buries her face in her hands. "I'm not Emily Fucking Post, you know."

The Cherub blinks. "Who?"

"...never mind."

"No no _no_ , don't never mind it." The fox zips around the both of us, a fast loop that'd do an Ofanite proud, and I'm compelled to wonder if the red fox fur of its chosen (or imposed?) Choir is relevant to what its next best choice would've been. "We were getting somewhere! You and me, Trade and War, peace and conflict, working up to some practice ring swings! That could _be_ something, and we're halfway to irony, but you gotta go ruin it by backing off."

"And this," I say to Luna, "is an excellent example of why not to work with or for War if you can help it. They're all violent lunatics."

"Maybe a _little_." The fox-Cherub grins the way dogs do, tongue lolling. "Not all money-obsessed like you folks, though, am I now? Not an Ofanite standing around having a chat when he could be _going_ somewhere." It takes another loop around us, faster than before. "Don't you wanna move, Wheel?"

"Motion's relative," I say. "My position in relation to you is constantly changing. As such, relatively speaking, I am in motion."

"Pedant," the fox says, a cheerful kind of insult. "Betcha get along with the hyenas, huh?"

"Almost as well as I get along with War," I say, which is the precise truth.

"I like Judgment," Luna says. "They're very...exact. They have plans and standards."

The Cherub sighs, and sinks down to the ground. It's a fox, and yet it's the size of a tiger when it's directly beside us. Proportion can be a funny thing in this place. "Not even gonna throw a few swings?" it asks. "Just for the sake of practice?" It pulls a vessel image up, an androgynous human of middling height and solid muscles. In combat boots, of course. "Give it a try, here and now! We can show the Mercurian some moves!"

"Hey," I say, "hold still." I check the pockets of my vessel-image's jacket, which is not so imaginary that it can't hold small items. (Penny would have a harder time carrying his phone around if he couldn't do the same; it's tricky to put pockets on a Seraph. The harnesses some Seraphim wear to get around this always end up making me think they're heading to wherever Heaven's BDSM community hangs out.) I get out a card and a good pen. "What's your name?"

"Tammaro, call me Tam, you gonna report me to Judgment or what? Think they got anything against me? Bet they think they do, they're that type, they think they've got something on everyone, a file on us all, huh?"

I scratch out a few lines on the card; it's a little harder to convince Heaven to act like a table for me than to ask gravity just not to let things fall. Control of directional force gets a lot weaker the further it gets from control of your own body, which is possibly some sort of metaphor as well as this place's reality. Or maybe I'm thinking of the Marches again. "I know they have a file on me. Here." I hand over the card.

Tam swipes it up and snaps it open. "Heyyyy," it says, "I didn't recognize you! Get your vessel shifted around already? Or just got two? Congrats on making it here, and no wonder you're all hot and cold!"

"I think he's always like this," Luna says. "But isn't it great?"

"Sure thing. Enemy loses people, we gain people, none of that messy spy sneakery with not being sure, because you're solid and here." The fox grins, and its vessel grins; I might not have recognized the one, but the other showed up at a rather memorable point in my recent history. "Still think you oughta be running around more. Spinning, flying, however you want to turn it. You tracking Sean down to yell at him or thank him?"

I make an ambivalent sort of noise, since I'm not sure myself.

"It's a good question," Luna says, "as long as we're here." She sits herself down in the air, legs crossed and wings half-folded. "Why _are_ you looking for someone you don't like?"

"I need to track down the people I owe for the rescue." I shove my hands back in my pockets, with the cards and pen and phone and other such bits of Heavenly life. "It's polite."

Luna and Tam wear identically skeptical expressions.

"Second statement comments accurately on the first, but doesn't function as an answer to the question that prompted the first statement," Tam says. "Tricky! Clever! You must run circles around Judgment."

Mostly I've run circles around their attempts to get appointments with me, though that won't last much longer. I can only stall them so long by being obviously and vigorously engaged with responsible post-redemption activities, and sending them basic information by reliever. "I can try. Hey, maybe I don't need Sean at all. Can you get me the names for the other people who showed up for that whole...thing? I need to send them notes."

"It's not accurate," Tam says, waving my card back at me. "You don't owe me a thing. Thanks, sure, I'll take the thanks, and you're welcome to what I gave you, but that gig's my job, even if _that_ gig wasn't my job. None of this back-and-forth tit-for-tat stuff about debt! I'm a Warrior, I do War, that was a fine battle for the right and the left and the _through_ , baby, through the eye." It makes illustrative gestures with all four feet, forgetting vessel image again. "You owe anyone, it's that Mercurian you don't like so much, since he got the yelling for unauthorized noise-and-blood excursions when he oughta to be doing all the sneaky stuff."

"He's not as good at being sneaky as he thinks," Luna says, so firmly that I know there has to be a story behind it.

"Mercurian," Tam says, with a foxy shrug. "They all go into diplomacy or intelligence."

"And since he doesn't qualify for either, there must be a special third category just for him," I say. "I already thanked _him_. How about that Kyrio that was with you, or the Seraph? Can you tell me how to send them cards without it being some whole mapping game?"

"Always obligation and debt with you people," Tam says. That could be an insult, but the Cherub hasn't weighted it that way. "The Kyrio's all hush-hush, so you're out of luck there, though I'll mention the thanks if I see them again any time soon. The Seraph, now, _that's_ easy enough, and she'd be happy to see you. Kid, you can find Riccarda yourself, can't you?"

"Oh, _sure_ ," Luna says, with a quick blink. She unfolds her legs to step on the ground again. "I didn't know she was in on that." For all her talk of non-violence, she sounds a little wistful on this point. (And maybe it would've been nice to have Luna there, given the option. Not for the fighting. Just. Proof of concept.) "She'll be at a watchpoint, if she's on any kind of duty."

"She's not on duty," Tam says, all vulpine smile again. "Make another guess! Or I'll take you there, no standing on ceremony, if you can keep up."

"Bet I _can_ ," Luna says, wings spreading.

Tam laughs, and whips away. Its wings curve behind it like it's streamlining a car for a wind tunnel, feet dashing sparks off the air, and Luna chases after. She looks downright natural in this aerial race. Almost like she was born here.

I pull out my phone, and check the app for HeavenMaps. It places me in a rough spot within the Grove, the circle around my location played out wide; the app's not very accurate anywhere without streets, and I'm told it refuses to give a more precise location within the Savannah than "outside of range." A few more taps, and the FindAFriend dots light up helpful references for other app users who have accepted my requests before. Penny is out of range, his phone not quite in existence until he gets back to Heaven; Eder's in their favorite garden, on top of one of the mixed residential/commercial buildings in the Bazaar; and Luna's moving away in a fairly straight line, still within the Grove.

It's not very precise, but I have a direction. I amble off that way. It's not _urgent_. When it's important to be somewhere quickly, I can tell. Pegging all my motion to full speed ahead does me as much good as a Cherub pledging eternal loyalty to every passing acquaintance. There may be such things as good and evil in the world, right and wrong and up and down and light and darkness, but there are gradations between all of them. I refuse to give up on my options in the middle.

Not until I need to.


	4. In Which We Talk Around What We Mean

The Grove may be filled with trees, and Heaven may not have a north to point towards, but the place isn't a maze. No doubt there are hidden clearings and entrances--War's too twisty a Word for there not to be--but it's simple to walk in a straight line between impossibly tall trees without getting turned around.

Or maybe that's an Ofanite thing. I'm not yet much good at deploying my resonance directly. Frankly, I haven't tried outside of when someone asks me to. (And only Penny and Luna have asked.) It's just...easier to find my way around than it ought to be, when this place is so large and I'm so new. Easier to know when I _ought_ to be getting going. It's too subtle for me to be certain of yet, or trust as an actual guide. Might be nothing but the oddity of Heaven. Or the oddity of being an angel, in touch with the Symphony, capital letter and all, instead of throwing my personal symphony around me to drown out the noise of the world with my own music.

The music's a good metaphor, but it's not mine. It's one of those metaphors so fundamental to the language that it's hard to tell what's a helpful simplification and what's actual reality. I don't _hear_ the Symphony, or disturbance within it, any more than I see numbers marked out on lines when I look at a space and know its measurements. It's not so much another sense as a type of knowing. Imagine if we all spoke about a City the way we speak about the Symphony. Seeing a traffic jam up ahead where someone decided to bend reality. Demons with their own personal city that they carry around with them, telling the buildings of reality that, no, you're not a school today, you're a drug den, because I the Habbalite tell you to be so...

I'd say that it's too human a metaphor to connect, but who had trumpets and cellos before humans came along? We're always searching for another way to explain something too big to properly understand.

Never mind that. Luna and Tam are waiting up ahead, Mercurian rocking idly on her heels while the Cherub zips around her in impatient circles. Tam dashes up to frown at me nose-to-nose. "You're late! What kind of Ofanite is late?"

"What am I late for?" I ask, hands in my pockets. I keep on walking, no faster or slower than before.

"The race!"

"There are relievers racing right over there. Am I late for their race too? Or am I only obliged to join in races with other full-grown angels?"

Tam spins about, half a wheel itself with the curve of its tail. "You wanted to get here, though."

"And I'm here."

"You could've taken so long that you'd've missed the person you were looking for!"

"Did I?"

"...not _yet_ ," Tam allows grudgingly, "but you could've!"

"Maybe if I was going to miss her, I would've picked up the pace."

"You're impossible sometimes," Luna says, now that we're close enough for her to hear our conversation. "What's wrong with running?"

"Nothing, if running is needed." I grin at her. "You had fun with it, didn't you?"

"You're changing the topic," Luna says.

"Am I?"

"Don't go all Socratic on me, Leo. It's so..." She struggles for a moment. "So _Elohite_."

"I thought you _liked_ Elohim."

"Well. Some of them. Yes. It's not like it's a--general preference." She folds her arms over her chest. "You're changing the topic again."

"Of course I am. I'm good at that. With some practice, you can make it work even under interrogation, especially if the interrogator isn't a professional. And frankly, most Malakim aren't. They rely far too much on basic pain and intimidation to get anything but crude results. Oddly enough, you usually get the same sort of issues from Seraphim. Elohim are the hardest to work around, so--" I stop, mostly because of the quite different expressions Luna and Tam are wearing. "Not that it's likely to come up. So. Where's this Seraph?"

"In there," Tam says, flicking its tail in the direction of the tree nearest us. Or, more precisely, toward a crack in its trunk large enough to let a bull-shaped Cherub charge through in comfort. Presumably the area inside isn't full of china. "Public enough, you might like it, not very combat-heavy but it's informational, right? You want to come try a few falls in a ring after that? Best three out of five, it'll be fun!"

"Thanks, but no thanks," I say, and I don't want to deal with the questions Luna is going to ask as soon as we're alone again. Not right now. "Sorry to drag you around through all this, Luna. Did you want to get back to other stuff?"

"I've got plenty of time," she says, which is not itself an answer.

Tammaro lets its tail swing below it three times, then says into the silence, "Kid, you should take me up on the offer. I'll show you falls and throws, like you can do without hurting anyone or getting hurt. Strictly self-defense. You can always talk people down once they're lying down, right?"

"I suppose so." Luna wiggles her fingers at me, and turns away. I get a reprieve on awkward questions, and she gets to learn some new combat tricks. A fair trade.

She's going to ask about that later.

Later.

The crack in the tree leads me into a room larger than most library branches I've visited. I think _library_ because the walls are lined with maps, plaques, and text carved directly into the wood. The sets of maps rise up along the entire interior of the hollow, or at least further than I can see above me, with more maps lining an enormous central column carved out of the same living wood. (This is Heaven, and anything that can be alive is. It's enough to make a man uncomfortable about putting his shoes up on a wooden desk.) It is a library of sorts; given where it's located, I'm guessing records of famous battles, or at least those that War finds interesting.

The place isn't packed, so I have no worries about locating my target through vast obscuring crowds. Two levels up, a Kyriotate lectures a dozen relievers (and two Malakim that have that blandly generic look of the newly-made) with three separate pointers moving over their chosen map, while maybe a half dozen patrons study others. When I squint above me, I can just make out the shape of a black Seraph some thirty levels up.

Could walk, or drift slowly upward. For once, I choose to...mm. Plummet, instead. I insist to the local gravity that it's pointed towards that shape, and let this mockery of physics take over.

Acceleration is nothing like Earth standard. I wonder if that's a matter of a different default, or based on going up instead of down (though it is, as I said to the Cherub, all relative), or something to do with my Choir or Forces or...well, I change my mind about the gravity, to decelerate gracefully on the near approach, before I can give that much more thought. (Can I really call it gravity, when it's not about physical bodies working on each other in proportion to their mass? Lightning would know, and I shouldn't spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel. But just asking them would be boring.) Zipping past people and then halting abruptly may be standard for Ofanim, but I find it rude.

I guess I'm better at remembering Seraphim than Cherubim, because I saw the celforms of all the incoming angels for the same amount of time, back in that lakeside house, but this one I'm sure on. She's colored like a snake, not themed to her Word or other personal metaphor: glossy black with red diamonds, all mapping to her hand-sized scales. Her wings are the same black, their pinions red. Striking, but not about to stand out boldly in the shadows.

On my arrival, she pauses in what she had been doing: painting a new map directly on the wall. A roughly outlined building, a fence, a road, assorted trees, the blocked-out space of where a car was already parked in the driveway--

It's the fight I was there for. I mean. I was in the house, but I know this one. Couldn't mistake the layout for any other, since I saw the house on the way out, and it maps up nicely. She's got a good memory for this kind of spatial detail. Or she took notes while she was there.

"A good day to you, Wheel," she says, coiling herself about to face me. She's the largest Seraph I've met from this close. Not surprising, knowing she's at least a Vassal, but even so. I can't help but remember Inez, who pretended to a size a little less than this, and probably had Forces more beyond. "What's the word of the day?"

I have the sudden impossible, impractical, _unreasonable_ desire to see how she does against Regan in a swordfight. Just to see how it would go.

That is entirely beside the point. And maybe I should've put a card together before I dropped up, because she has me tongue-tied in a way the Cherub didn't.

Since when have I been speechless? I pull on a grin, not as sharp as it used to be, and keep my hands in my pockets. "Today's vocabulary word is: favor. As in, I owe you one, because you did one for me. Technically you were doing it for that damn Mercurian, but since I asked him for the help..." I shrug, and wish I were speaking a language I was more comfortable in. One I could twist a bit more instead of saying what I mean. "I thought I'd say thank you in person, at that. So here I am."

"If it isn't that poor little Trader's Calabite friend, all fixed up!" She doesn't mean it in a _bad_ way, though I'm not used to hearing Penny referred to as little. (Poor I will agree to, in the sense of expressed sympathy; neither of us was very happy with the situation at the time, and I have...not been the kindest, to him.) "And what an Ofanite you are. Mind if I take a look?"

She sweeps around me without waiting for an answer, green marker (she was in the middle of doing the trees) clutched in tail's tip. Three quick loops, and she's checked me out along every axis. I may have been paying attention to the view in return, truth be told. "Feel free," I say. It is not the most graceful phrase, nor is it clever, but it suffices.

"I do," she says, all six eyes amused. And when she settles back down, she's still looped loosely around me. Not uncomfortably close, but...around. "He must be a sight happier with you here, looking like this. I like the interlock up there. Sort of a puzzle ring, isn't it, with the way those loops hook together? You could pull in to a single hoop, or do three chained ones spread out. _Very_ nice." She smiles with teeth as white and sharp as the fox's. "Of course, there's no such thing as a poorly-made Ofanite, but even so."

I feel that this conversation has gotten away from me, somehow.

"I'm moderately confident in saying that would be true for any Choir." If I'm not careful, I'll find myself standing in parade rest in front of this Seraph, even here in mid-air. No matter that we're not even working for the same _Word_ , though I suppose I'm supposed to be respectful of people with distinctions and all. It's harder to feel the right sense of awe about distinctions when it doesn't map well to "likely to disembowel you if you look at them funny," but a Seraph of this size creates some awe all its own.

"Depends on how you're rating them," she says, and spreads a wing my way in what isn't exactly a handshake offer, but a similar kind of gesture. "M'name's Riccarda, though you must've worked that out by now. Settling in? Set on your Archangel and everything?"

"Of course I'm _set_ ," I say, and try Luna's cross-legged pose to avoid excessive fidgeting. "He redeemed me. How could I not be decided at this point?"

"Luna wasn't," Riccarda says, "righteous kid that she is, and good on her for giving that real thought. Life's full of easy defaults, and those can turn into traps if you sit in them too long, when they're the wrong place." She loops around and through herself idly as she speaks, but it's not _I was almost an Ofanite_ motion like with Tam. All Seraph, but one more able than most to look at a problem from multiple directions. "Now how do you figure it that when I got to show up and shoot demons, and then a Friend yelled at Sean for resource appropriation, you owe me a favor?"

"Are you objecting to the concept of personal debt, or just this iteration of it?"

Riccarda's eyes light up. "Oh, you want to take it that way? Let's talk personal responsibility and personal satisfaction against duty and commodification of the same. Your place or mine?"

"Um," I say. I cannot help but think of Julie, for an unreasonable moment, though what an Impudite of Theft has to do with a Seraph of War I don't know. Riccarda hasn't used the word "fun" once yet. "Haven't deployed my housing credit yet, so I've been staying with Penny."

"I haven't met him up here," Riccarda says thoughtfully, coiling herself back up again. "Probably the reasonable sort, given the Word, and clearly all kinds of attached. Not to mention the way he can make Sean rant! I admire that in a Seraph, even if they're not exactly my _type_. Drop me a hint if that one's the monogamous type. Coffee shop, then?"

Wait. What? "I don't drink coffee."

"Then I know just the place." Riccarda spreads her wings, a darker black than the distance of the tree's hollow above us. "Unless you don't drink booze either?"

"Depends on the type," I say. There are ways to regain control of this conversation, but most of them wouldn't function in angelic, much less against a Seraph. "Since I've already delivered the message, I could get back to other work."

"Urgent work that you'd be late for otherwise?"

"Well, no--"

"Excellent," Riccarda says. She's an arrow pointing up, with the cant of her wings, and she seems perfectly happy to wait there until I catch up. (At least she's not chiding me for not being faster or fidgety.) "Come have a drink, if you think you owe me a favor. If I can convince you otherwise, then you can decide if I owe you for imposing on a debt I don't believe in."

There's no good way to turn down an offer like that.

#

Trade has coffee shops of every variety, and no few restaurants, salons, and more peculiar arrangements for sitting down and having something consumable in front of you while you chat with friends or watch the crowds. I don't know what War has in general, but Riccarda takes me to a place where Vikings would look right at home. A dim wooden house of long tables and dirt floors, with a fire blazing at one end and a Kyriotate playing seven drums at the other. The smoky haze inside must be deliberate; it wouldn't cling otherwise.

Riccarda acknowledges a number of greetings with a tilt of a wing to each, but doesn't stop for any. "Luna's a good kid," she tells me, "but she's a kid, which is why she asks the big questions. You've already made up your mind on most of those, haven't you? So now when it comes to debt and responsibility, you're not asking, you're arguing. Two mugs, fluffster," she adds to a wooly reliever the size of a collie. "How's your sister? Still taken with the Sword?"

"She likes _structure_ ," the reliever says, as gloomy as I've ever heard from one of those. It maneuvers two mugs to a keg bigger than itself, and kicks the tap open expertly. "I said, we have structure! There's hierarchy and commands and battle plans. She said, it's not the same."

"The Sword's not so bad," Riccarda says. She sweeps up the first mug to pass it to me herself. "Not like she's going Flowers, right? Or Judgment, on the structure side. Maybe she likes the shiny uniforms."

"We could _get_ her shiny uniforms," says the reliever, and heaves an enormous sigh as she delivers the second mug to Riccarda. "I don't see what they have that we don't."

"They're straightforward," I say, though it's not really any of my business. I shrug at the reliever when it focuses on me. "War _can_ do a lot of things that the Sword _will_ do, every time. Sometimes people like that level of certainty."

"I don't get how that's different," the reliever says. "She can count on us."

"Not the way she can count on orders from the Sword. You can change your mind, and apologize later, if something more important comes up. If she's working for War, that'll be her approach too. With the Sword, once it's commanded, it's _set_. No 'I came up with a better idea' excuses to worry about later."

"But why would anyone _want_ to not be able to come up with a better idea?" the reliever demands.

"Why would anyone not want to be able to run away from a fight?" I take a sip from my mug, and do _not_ spit it right back out at anyone, because that would be more impolite than I feel like being in front of impressionable kids. "I'm just guessing. Best thing you can do is take her at her word, if she's told you what she wants. It's not like she could be lying about it."

The reliever only looks baffled now, as if I have established that the reason couldn't be that its sister was replaced with a demonic doppleganger. No, of course she couldn't be lying about it. Lies are as theoretical to this child as starlight is to a gremlin in Shal-Mari. And maybe harder to believe in, as they're more contrary to the natural order of things here.

"Your mother will talk to her," Riccarda says, "and if she goes Sword, well, they're always stopping by the Grove, aren't they? Take care, kid."

We seem to be taking our drinks right back out of the hall, which is fine by me. This place borders on claustrophobic, even aside from having more Malakim and Elohim than I'm particularly comfortable with in a confined area. Riccarda leads me through a curtained door not far from the fire, then up above to a series of platforms circling the relatively narrow trees of this stretch of the Grove. (I try not to think about Ewok villages, and fail. But the only fuzzy things around are Cherubim.) While smoke doesn't carry up beyond the hall, the sunlight's coming through the canopy more dimly here. It's as near to a twilight as I've found in Heaven yet.

"I don't mean to dawdle," Riccarda says easily, after knocking back a swig of her drink, "but I like to talk to the small stuff. You don't find many of them overawed by the Vassal thing, or fussing around the issue. Kids say what they mean."

"Sure. Everything they want is right up in the front of their minds. They haven't learned how to overthink it yet, or second-guess themselves." I lean on the railing to the walkway she's taken us to, and end up with a Seraph slung over the same rail to my left and right, and looped behind me. "Never did mind kids, so long as they weren't trying to chew my face off."

"Not a lot of those here," Riccarda says. "Maybe over in Animals, but even then it's a friendly kind of chewing. Teething, you know." She swings her head around to side-eye my mug. "Not to your taste?"

"Am I going to be insulting the traditional drink of your people if I say no?"

"The truth's not an insult," Riccarda says. "Closest it comes to that is being said to the wrong person at the wrong time. Fermented mare's milk isn't to everyone's taste. Maybe I should've tried you on the mead."

"Too sweet." I want this to be sunset, the slide towards night. (And I still associate sunset with Essence. There's not even dawn in Heaven, aside from the Essence hit itself, for me to start building up the reverse association yet.) I find myself missing those theoretical stars. "I thought you were going to tell me why I don't owe you anything."

"Nothing so far as that," Riccarda says. "If you step out abstract enough--and it's Trade's job to do that kind of abstraction--we owe each other all sorts of things, just by being angels, and inhabitants of Heaven. Defense and some level of basic respect, if only for territory and past deeds. Now, on a personal level, what kind of favor did I do you, when I didn't even know you? That Mercurian shows up and shouts 'Do you wanna kill some demons?' across the Grove, I step downstairs to lend _him_ a few well-placed bullets..." A ripple passes across her body.

"Debt is impersonal all the time." I drag a thumbnail through the soft wood of the railing. Names and commentary already scar it, as far as I can see, though no dates that will tell me if this piece of wood has been here for three years or three thousand. "I take the bumper off your car, and the insurance companies don't care if we had prior acquaintance. Jump into a river to save a drowning stranger, and they're likely to be grateful."

"Gratitude's different," Riccarda says. "Don't think I'd turn down that, especially if I can build a date out of it. Thank you and you're welcome, sure, but that's not the same as debt. Debt's more like..." It is a little gratifying to hear her pause. "...structure, huh? Is that what gets you hot under the collar?"

"I wouldn't put it quite _that_ way."

But now she's pleased with herself again, rolling out enough of her body to be able to face me directly over the railing. "So that's how you end up settling on Trade. Not the money, is it?"

"No more than you ended up with War because of the bountiful armories, I imagine."

"They're a perk," Riccarda says. "Are you going to drink that?"

"Not unless forced to." I surrender my mug to her, and she drains it in one go. "Money's just a metaphor that lets people deal with each other more abstractly."

"And war is diplomacy by other means?" She laughs, head propped on a coil of herself. "I'm glad I met you after you were in the right kind of company. We should go out for another type of drinks when you have longer to talk. Oh, don't give me that look, I know an Ofanite who's feeling the need to be some other place when I see one. I won't hold you, but I might send you a few notes. Ask you out for beer and wrestling."

"That sounds remarkably like a date, Riccarda."

"Doesn't it? Now just _imagine_ the look on that Mercurian's face."

I'm pretty sure she's not talking about Luna. And--she's right, I am starting to fidget. This doesn't seem like the right place for me to be, not for much longer. "There's an image to keep me warm at night," I say, and...I leave, I just leave, without any prolonged goodbyes.

I'm starting to act on instinct, and that bothers me. Is it the influence of Heaven, some subtler variant of the overwhelming _lay down your weapons_ force of the Pax Dei, that tells me where to be and when? An aspect of being an Ofanite that I'm still figuring out? Or just the result of doing what I like, when I'm in a place where what I like can't bring much harm to anyone?

Though that's not true. I could still hurt a number of people by passing various information along. And I might hurt people by not passing that information along, generally _different_ people, some of them those strangers who I owe protection and respect to by virtue of being an angel. (Though not, let's all be grateful, being a Virtue.) Action and inaction both have the potential for harm, and no wonder so many angels never leave Heaven. No wonder no one is too much bothered by the Wind's petty theft. There are bigger things to worry about than property rights once the corporeal gets involved.

#

The window of Penny's office stands open for me. Not for me alone, but with me in mind, among others. I drop to the floor so quietly that he doesn't look up from his laptop. The screen is all spreadsheets at the moment. Trade _isn't_ about money and accounting, but people can be forgiven for believing that once in a while, based on available evidence.

"How was work downstairs?" I ask. Hands in my pockets, like I've been standing there a while.

Penny turns away from the laptop. He doesn't smile the way those Warriors do, not in this form. He simply looks...pleased. It's in the eyes, and the easy way he holds his wings. "About the same as usual. No surprises, in any case. And your day?"

"Dodged a Cherub of Stone, went to the Grove, talked to some Warriors. I marked some more thank-yous off the list." I take the chair that spins while Penny leans against the wall where he can see me. Sometimes he just--stands there, and watches, like I don't even have to _do_ anything to make him happy. Being here's enough.

Maybe I can even understand that. It meant something, to meet Eder again inside the kind of host only a Kyriotate can use. Or to see Luna with feathered wings, still ready to argue with me over whatever she's taken to mind today.

"There was a Cherub at the door when I arrived," Penny says. "I told him that you appeared to be in the Grove. Did you send him one of those notes that explains why you're not sorry?" There's just a _little_ censure in that question. Not more than I deserve.

"No, I apologized up and down for my run-in with him. He lost at least two human friends that I know of. Sincere apology and everything." I spin the chair around, stop it when I'm facing Penny again. I like the start and stop of it; kicking off with a foot, stopping with a heel to the ground. "I also gave out some advice. Most likely that's what he took exception to."

"Advice?"

"Tether security. I am _something_ of an expert on that by now, you know. Isn't Stone supposed to be good at stationary defenses?"

"...Leo."

"It was good advice! If he doesn't want critiques from outside sources, he can damn well ignore it." I grin toothily over at Penny. "Or explain why I'm wrong. I'm willing to learn."

Penny makes a distinctly noncommittal noise. "How were the Warriors?"

"Friendlier than I expected." I drum my fingers on the back of the chair. "Very friendly, in one case. The Seraph was hitting on me. Maybe. I don't know. Does it mean the same sort of thing from a Seraph that it does from everyone else, when they start discussing the aesthetics of my, uh, rings? Or does it not count until they say 'Also, I'm interested in threading some metaphorical needles'?"

"Revelation aside, Seraphim can be as indirect as anyone else when they care to be." He abandons his desk to throw a few coils over that perch. "However, if a Seraph has chosen to express a strongly positive opinion of your appearance, to your face, you might well consider that suggestive."

I prop my chin on my hands. "Well, what do _you_ think about it?" Penny blinks, and I find I have to clarify. Even angelic allows for imprecise pronouns at times. "Appearance, comma, my, comma, celestial. What it signifies being set aside from the theoretical aesthetics."

"I like it quite well," Penny says. "Do you?"

On the corporeal I'd just say _yes of course_ , and get that arch look as Penny knows what I mean regardless of what I actually say. Can't do that here. "No," I say. "Though it sounds better if I phrase it as 'not yet' or 'not quite' instead. It's...strange."

"Different from your previous celestial form?"

I take the chair around in another circle. The whole office is visible to me even if I don't spin, just from my sense of sight not being limited to eyes anymore, and I have to wonder how Ofanim made in Heaven cope the first time they take on vessels. Maybe all the fidgeting they're known for is just their attempt to see in all directions at once again. "Different from vessels. By the end of all that, my celestial body didn't seem as much like me as my vessels did. Even the one that didn't match me well at all. I've spent more of my life on the corporeal than anywhere else, Penny. Trying to fit in with the humans well enough to do my job, or just because...they're generally more pleasant than demons. Now I'm here in Heaven, and everyone's telling me I'm in the right and true shape that I should've had all along, and it's nothing like anything. It's like _things_ , not people. People have eyes, and various types of limbs. They're made of meat, not fire."

Penny leaves his perch, and steps toward me. All vessel form, though I can see him as Seraph as well. (Everyone here can see the wheels of fire in me, no matter what body I put on top of it. Painting the building doesn't change its shape.) He offers me a hand, and when I take it, he pulls me up to _my_ feet, which aren't real, any more than his arms looped around me.

This isn't quite real, but it's true enough to feel like it. I rest my face on his chest and consider how even in this set of vessels, he's still taller than me.

"If you'd rather I look like this--"

"Oh, _you're_ fine. I like Seraphim. Seraph-shaped people. Probably more than I should, since long before I ever met a Seraph who didn't have that prefix that made them something else..." I stop talking about that before it wanders into dangerous territory. This language is a menace. "Maybe I should actually read the material Orlaith keeps forwarding to me. See if there's a chapter called 'So Now You're Made Of Fire' in there somewhere."

"You could do that," Penny says.

Sometimes it's easier with Balseraphs, who'll just tell me what to do and what to believe. Structure and certainty, even if it's made of lies. But that's... I don't know. The cotton candy diet of reality. Unsustainable and likely to lead to vomiting and/or betrayal if indulged in for too long.

There are no doubt plenty of Seraphim around who'd tell me exactly what I ought to do, by their truth-backed opinion. Penny isn't one of them. He promised half a lifetime ago (if only half of _my_ lifetime, and one of these days I should ask him for his age just as a point of comparison) not to press. He has never, ever tried to force me, even when he refused to walk away from me.

(No matter how appropriate it might be to my new Choir, I shouldn't run off and see if he can catch me. We've already done that. It was hard enough on both of us the first time through.)

Hell. Let's try some of the truth, or as near to it as I can get.

"I don't actually want to read a lot of employee manuals," I say. True statement of personal interest, or lack thereof. "They'll just make me want to get back to some sort of real work." Statement about the future, weighted appropriately for being personal supposition based on past experience: it's hard to assign truth values to predictions, except insofar as the person stating them believes in them or not. "I need more time up here before I can go down there and be useful." Opinion, honestly expressed. "I want more time with _you_."

It's easier to speak in this language, true from end to end, when it's not about me.

"I can stay as long as you want," Penny says. It's not a promise, but it's breathtaking.

(I miss having breath to take. Blame the celestial plane.)

"No," I say, "because you have work to do, and I'm not going to stop _wanting_. But you can stay a while, and I can figure things out, and we can keep running into each other. Can't we?"

We can. We don't even have to make it explicit, and we can let the conversation go other places, and I find out pretty damn fast that Seraph feathers _tickle_ where you wouldn't expect it.


	5. In Which I Keep Promises I Never Made, But Should Have

It's a good thing the reliever shows up at the door, not the open window, because I'm not sure they tell the kids in the Sword what sex is until after they've fledged. Not that we were particularly in the _middle_ of anything (or, uh, anyone), but it's actually sort of impressive how much space a Seraph of moderate size can take up while also in the processing of checking his email.

Once untangled, I answer the door. The kid's probably as big as Luna, Force-wise, a shadowy little thing you might mistake for a winged child if the light were bad enough. Her heels click together as she holds an envelope up to me.

As the envelope in question has my name on it--it's still strange to see that written in angelic characters--I pop the card out while standing in the doorway. "Looks like I'm following you," I say to the kid, who nods once. "Penny, I'll be out for a while. Want me to pick up anything on the way back?"

"Coffee, if it's convenient," Penny says. His typing speed has picked up since I stood up. So maybe my presence is a little hard on productivity.

"Lead on," I tell the kid, and tuck the card into a pocket with my cigarettes, in case I need to show it on arrival. "So what's your name?"

"I don't have a final one yet," the reliever says. "I'll take a true name when I fledge." She sets a brisk pace, which is more of a stroll for me. I don't usually find the celestial plane as appealing as the corporeal, but oh, it is nice to be stronger and faster for a while, before trying to connect to the world through my Corporeal Forces again.

We take the fourth floor exit, which leads to an arching wooden bridge that most people simply fly from, unless they're standing around and chatting. The nameless reliever hesitates, with a sidelong look to me, before she launches.

I could make a point of walking, but I'm trying not to do that unless there's a _specific_ point I want to make, as opposed to just flustering people who expect otherwise.

"Going Malakite when you get another Force?" I ask her. Navigation's not difficult, as you can see the spires of the Eternal City easily from any high point in Heaven, but having been given a guide, I may as well stick with her. Someone in the Sword is doing me a favor. They don't have to.

The reliever nods. Not exactly the chatty type.

"Why?"

"My mother is so," the reliever says. "As was her father, as is his mother, as is her father, Commander of the Host."

Angelic tenses can be remarkably precise. I shut up and give some thought to soul death among angels, who only ever have to worry about that when confronting demons in places outside of home. The First Fall aside, and the theoretical final battle also being considered as quite the exception, there is nowhere safer in all of reality than Heaven itself. You can't be so much as scratched, here, in a way that causes real damage.

And we all keep charging back down to the corporeal anyway, to make a point about how that whole place ought to be left alone.

Not all of us. There might be as many angels in Heaven who never reach the corporeal as demons in Hell who do the same, though I'm not sure how anyone would get hard numbers on the latter. Less churn on the former, regardless. People who have made it their life's work to serve coffee or design chairs or file legal briefs or counsel newly arrived souls, not because they're unable to get anything better, but because...well, the work needs to be done, and they can do it, so why wouldn't they? Why risk everything on the corporeal when home is perfectly safe and comfortable?

I need to think about this some more. The way angels who go downstairs aren't nearly as parallel to the demons who do, not as much as I used to think. There are places of overlap, but it's really not the same thing at all.

That's what keeps catching me off-guard, here. Not the details. Of course Heaven would differ from Hell in the details, just like Houston and Seattle do. But all the ways the places aren't parallel. There aren't even _border checks_ here. Fights are verbal. It's--unreal. Impossible. Clearly real and possible and what it is, for as long as it can hold out.

We set down in stone-walled courtyard. A Mercurian pours water from an urn into the upheld hands of a human child, endless water over eternal stone. If erosion works in this place, no one's told the fountain yet.

"The Abbess says you may take as long as you wish." The reliever bows to me after delivering this final message, and retreats at a stately pace that's odd to see in a child. I suppose it's easier to be dignified when you have a multi-generation family legacy to live up, traced back to the most uptight Archangel in Heaven.

I walk around the fountain, to find a Kyriotate on a bench.

Benches aren't the ideal seats for what's a sort of glittery cloud of human-esque body parts. This courtyard has rough half-spheres as well, for the less human-shaped angels to find some comfort in. But she's decided to take her place on half a stone bench, and so I sit down beside her on the other half. We can watch the water fall--I want to consider the whole thing insipid, but it's too well done for me to feel that sincerely--and not talk for a while. Smell the roses, I guess. Plenty of those growing up near the walls, and less aggressive flowers in simple planters.

There's only one door in the walls to this courtyard, and I'm not allowed through it. But walls aren't about confinement in Heaven. They mark out a space. This is the only place she's allowed right now that I have permission to enter as well.

"I'm sorry I sent you to Judgment without telling you," I say, by way of uncomfortable opening lines.

Nik is quiet for a long moment. Most of her eyes are turned away from me. (And why shouldn't they be? I don't look like any version of myself that she's ever seen. I'm an Ofanite with a strange vessel, redeemed from a Word I hadn't even started to serve when she left.) She says, eventually, "It was probably for the best."

"I could've told you, though. That I thought things were going too far. Or that you should go back on your own. It wasn't _my_ decision to make." I press my hands across my knees where I won't fidget with anything. Certainly I shouldn't break out a cigarette in here; while no one said anything about no smoking in the abbey, they probably expected they didn't need to. "Or I could've just sent you along like usual, with the same favor as ever from Iris. He's a Seneschal, and he'd met you before. He had better judgment than I did about what the situation needed."

Nik turns another eye towards me, and says nothing.

"And when I say 'situation' I really mean you. I thought I knew what you needed, and I thought that..." I turn my hands over in my lap. Upturned, and no one offering me water to wash them clean. "I don't know. That I was in charge, so it was my responsibility to take care of everyone. Or that since I was the demon, and you were the angel, I should fix whatever corruption I'd caused in you. But it wasn't my call. You were making your own choices. If you didn't see the problems, I could've just told you. If you didn't want to fix them, or didn't think they were problems... It wasn't _my_ choice. It shouldn't have been."

Nik has fingers of her own to lay down in the space between us. I miss her bodies; it was easier to deal with her as multiples, not this one unhappy cluster of uncoordinated self. "What if I had chosen to Fall?"

"I wouldn't have liked it. But it would've been your choice."

"You're _here_ ," she says, "and you still say that?"

"I got a redemption, Nik, not a lobotomy." I shove my hands into my pockets, which is a bad call, because this reminds me of the cigarettes I'm not supposed to light up around here. Being a good guest. Right. "Of course I don't want you to be a Shedite. I didn't when I was a demon, and having met some since then, I'm saying that was a sign of excellent judgment on my part. But what good is it to be a pure and holy angel of God if it's just what you're doing for lack of other options? I should've told you, instead of setting you up."

"You should have followed me," Nik says.

"Funny. That's what someone else told me." I scrub the bridge of my nose, and try not to think too much about how tired she sounds. After seeing how well Eder and Luna are doing, all things considered--I thought she'd be better by now. _Happier_. They were demons, and she was only Outcast, so why's she the one with limited mobility and a restricted guest list? "Maybe a few someones. I didn't know what this place was like, Nik."

"You could've asked me," she says. "If you meant to start asking my opinion on things. You could've come to the Flowers Tether, and asked Iris for sanctuary, even if Judgment came to speak to me. You could've walked back to that Tether any time--"

"You could've gone back to Heaven at any time," I say. "Right? All on your own. Without my help."

I regret saying that, when she goes quiet again.

"I just mean--it's not that easy. You _know_ it's not that easy." I pull out a cigarette, and turn it between my fingers, unlit. "It took me years to be able to walk into a Tether and say 'Let's do this thing, even if it kills me,' and it wasn't easy then, either. I trusted Iris's opinion of Judgment enough to believe they wouldn't hurt you. Not enough to give myself to them."

"What if I'd stayed with you?" There's a space between us, her fingers laid out on the stone and mine a few centimeters away, like something might catch fire, or break, if we touched. "You say you were corrupting me. I say it was exactly the reverse. If you hadn't sent me away--don't you think you might've followed me home?"

I spin the cigarette in a circle, and shove it back in my pocket. No dissolving things with my mind anymore. Wouldn't want to litter here anyway. "We're speaking entirely in the past unreal. How are we supposed to come up with any answers that'll satisfy us? I sent you away. I didn't follow. That's what _happened_ , regardless of what could have or would have. All I can apologize for is what I actually did."

This must be the right place for me to be, because while Nik is silent a while longer, it doesn't feel like I ought to get up and go somewhere else.

And when her fingers bump into mine, well. All motion is relative. Distance depends on context. A few centimeters can be a long ways away, depending on who's covering it and how.

"I missed you." I'm the one to say it, and I turn my hand up to hold this hand of hers, while the cloud that makes as much sense as my fire (when it comes to bodily composition) leans in. "Having a team was better than having a partner. The highs weren't as high, but the lows sure weren't as low either. And it turns out I'm sort of crap at doing things all by myself."

"What happened to the ethereal?"

"I left Ferro behind in the Marches." I shrug back at her expression. "Yeah, I know, it's a _habit_. I had to run away from my partner to get here, so it's not even like it's one I've broken yet."

"What was your partner like?"

"That's complicated," I say, which is not an answer, but is true. "Djinn. It was hard to get any breathing space. What's life like back in Heaven?"

"Quiet."

"Good quiet, or boring quiet?"

"It's easier to focus here," she says. I can respect the decision to not answer the question, and I know Nik well enough to realize that means the answer is not the good one. Or the boring one, which she'd admit to. The bad kind of quiet. "There are fewer ways to go wrong. No hosts I could harm, or try to control more than I ought. Very simple orders to follow."

"No contrary points of view to confuse the matter."

"Not many," Nik says. She turns more eyes toward me. There's something of the way she moved her hosts in how she uses her body here, though I don't have the right vocabulary to describe it. (Angelic offers the right words, ready to be deployed, when I know exactly what I mean to say. But I don't. I know how it feels, but not how to make it language. Frustrating.) "You don't approve."

"I don't. I sent you back to Heaven because I didn't want you to Fall, but I expected that by now you'd be..." I turn my hand in the air. "Happier."

"I'm more secure in my faith than before. Fitting back into the Word I serve better."

"But you're not happy."

"I wasn't made to be happy. I was made to serve. That's what angels _do_. Even Archangels, who are in service to Heaven, and to God."

"To what they believe about Heaven, and what they believe about God."

She snorts. It's a peculiar sound from multiple places on a Hive. "Redemption hasn't made you any less cynical, has it?"

I tilt my hand in the air, and then let it rest there. My arm will never grow tired in that place. Now that's eternity. "I believe in the possibility of good things that I didn't before, but I still don't believe in perfection. It just brings up the question of what we mean by perfect. Maybe your current situation is the best possible solution with how the Sword looks at the options, but you're not happy, and I doubt you're getting anything done outside of contemplation. Which would drive me batty--"

"Ofanite," she says, so fondly I nearly lose my train of thought.

"Even without that! Can't you petition for a reassignment? Ask to go work for a Word that's not so straight-laced? I know there _are_ some, and some of them are even on good terms with your boss. What about War?"

"You hate War," Nik says.

"...well, yes, but you might like it better. Every Word's going to have some people I dislike, and probably even the Words I dislike will have some people I don't." I pull my feet up to turn around on the bench (rings spinning and locking back into place) to face her directly. "Do you want to stay with the Sword?"

"I think I should."

"But do you _want_ to?"

Mouths and hands tilt across her, considering. "I don't want to run away from what's difficult, just because it's difficult," she says. Which is a little accusatory, but no more than is fair. "The Sword is part of what I am, as much as my Choir is. You knew I shouldn't give up the one. I won't give up the other."

"Okay. So you're sticking with it." I try a smile on for size. It feels like I don't have any sharp edges, just bruised ones, since I got this body. "I can respect that. Are you--do you want to stick with this silent retreat thing? Because if you'd like to try something else, I could at least ask."

"I would like to be more...useful." Nik quivers, eyes turning inward. "They tell me that I need to help myself before I can be of proper help to others, but I would still like to be _useful_. Still. There's no need for you to worry about it. They check on me often."

"Is that a 'You don't need to trouble yourself' or a 'please don't interfere'?"

"If I asked you not to interfere, would you leave it be?"

"Yes," I say, "I'd just be annoyed about it. And I'd still come by to visit, unless you didn't want me to do that either."

She lightens, almost imperceptibly. Silver gray to a paler silver, and still without the shine I've seen on others of her Choir. (Though it's possible Trade Kyrios sparkle more than most.) "I don't think you can do anything to change what I've been assigned, but you can try if it'll make you happy." She hesitates all over again. "Are you happy? Here."

"It's not perfect. But I'm happier." Despite what I've lost, and what I can't quite deal with yet.

Bells ring from the abbey tower, and Nik lifts herself up. "Mondays are the easiest for visits," she says, "but they can be arranged on any day. Come back when--you'd like to."

"I'll come back to see you again." I get to my feet, knowing a dismissal when I see one. "Promise."


	6. An Interlude, In Which Penny Doesn't Get Much Work Done

Leo spun back into the office and said, "If an Outcast gets back to Heaven, who's in charge of their, I don't know, work-release program? Parole?"

"It would depend on the circumstances," Penny said, "but likely some combination of Judgment and their own Word."

"Hell. I'm going to have to ask Judgment for information again. Or--no, wait, I bet I can do an end run around this by talking to the abbess. She seemed pretty reasonable, at least in text." Leo circled the room, glancing at the screen of Penny's laptop. "Still on the same spreadsheets?"

"Still."

Penny was about to ask if Leo wanted any assistance when the man snapped his fingers and said, "The old-fashioned way. God knows the Sword seems to prefer anything that looks like it's stuck in the 19th century. I'll go pick up some decent stationery. And--oh, I forgot your coffee. I'll bring that back around while I'm at it."

"It's not strictly necessary," Penny said. Then he closed the door, since Leo had forgotten to do that on the way out.

#

Penny was contemplating the default rates on a group of loans handled by a particular organization that was perhaps suffused with more enthusiasm than financial expertise when Leo came in through the window.

"Coffee," Leo said, setting it down on the desk. "Did any Cherubim stop by while I was out?"

"Thank you. And, no. Were you expecting any?"

"...I think I'd better get this letter posted," Leo said, and left again.

#

A Cherub of Stone arrived to glower indiscriminately. Penny wasn't certain if the Cherub remembered that they had met on the corporeal; it seemed most prudent not to raise the topic if the Guardian didn't care to first.

After confirming that the office held no Ofanite at all, the Cherub went on to explain the many character flaws demonstrated by a letter sent his way. Penny felt that "condescending little punk" was incorrect on at least two particulars, but as it was all expressed as opinion, decided not to quibble. Telling someone that their feelings were incorrect seldom ended well.

"Do you know when he'll be back?" the Cherub asked, at last.

"Not precisely," Penny said. "I believe he was trying to find an appointment with someone in the Sword, and I don't know how long that will take him. Or he might be back at any moment. It's difficult to say with Ofanim."

The Cherub snorted, and left the office.

#

Just as Penny opened up the word processor to start working on a report, his phone rang.

"This fire thing," Leo said on the other end, "it's fairly metaphorical, right? I mean, no one is catching fire or screaming in pain when they touch it, so it's not like it's _fire_ fire. As these things go."

"There are some who would claim the corporeal version of fire is only an imperfect imitation of what Ofanim have," Penny said, "but that sounds generally correct on the details."

"So if, let's say, I can't stop by and say hello to someone unless I swim down to the bottom of a lake first, it's not exactly going to douse me? I mean, what does a doused Ofanite even look like? Is there something that's _on_ fire in the center of the fiery stuff, or is it metaphorical turtles all the way down?"

"Turtles all the way down," Penny said. "Outside of some extremely well-labeled parts of the Halls of Progress, nothing in Heaven should be able to do you unexpected damage."

"Great. Thanks."

The call shut off before Penny could pass along his greetings to Vaina.

#

_Do you need anything while I'm out?_ said the text message.

_More coffee is always welcome._ Penny thought a moment, and added, _Will you be out long?_

_Stopping by tech support. It turns out that even Lightning's phones don't like full immersion._

_Did the meeting with Vaina go well?_

_It was great. We talked structure and technical advances in the uses of glass in architecture. Anything going on there?_

Penny drained his current cup of coffee, and looked over the entire three sentences he'd written on his report. _Nothing urgent. Take your time._

#

Leo spun himself around in the chair by one foot, chin resting on its back. "He still takes it seriously," he said, while Penny sipped fresh coffee. "Which--makes sense, I suppose. It's not that long ago for him, and why wouldn't he take it seriously? But it's so damn different from what I'd assume, back in Hell. A dead Archangel is a tragedy, not a sign that you were serving the wrong person. A rare kind of tragedy. I bet you could name every Archangel that's died, since the First Fall. I couldn't tell you what Princes died last century. Maybe I could name a few of the big or weird ones that everyone remembers, like Legion."

"It is rare," Penny said. He enjoyed seeing the interplay of levels of reality, as Leo spun about. The human image in the center, fitted to the chair, and the rings that spun around that image in turn. Like armor, or an embrace. "Princes may eat each other, but the only Archangels who have died were the ones who fought the other side."

"Maybe Flowers has the right idea." Leo was still and thoughtful in the center, three rings loosening from each other and locking together again in a constant shuffle of connection on the outside. "Get everyone to sit down and talk it out. Right up until that doesn't work, and...even Flowers has Malakim."

"Trade stands in the center," Penny said. "We have to see the reasons for violence and peace both, if we mean to help them negotiate."

"But the Boss is a Mercurian, not a Kyriotate. Despite..." Leo drew a circle in the air. "The need for all those different perspectives."

"Of course. Trade requires more than one person. We see many points of view, but what we make are the connections between them."

"Huh." Leo let his eyes close, rings whirling together and apart. Opened them again. "Sure, it makes sense. Want to make some connections?"

The report could certainly wait another hour or two.


	7. In Which I Am As Cooperative As Seems Appropriate

We got a couch into the office about four hours ago, which I'd say is just in time. I have my feet propped up on the cushions while I sprawl out across the floor; this gives me an excellent view of the Judgment triad standing at the points of a semicircle around my head. 

"It's the opinion of my Archangel," I say, "that those details aren't any of your business. Next question?"

The Cherub looks about ready to ask another question starting with _why_ , but the Seraph's realized just how useful that's going to be to them. (Spoiler: not very.) And so the winged ibex gets to shut up while the Most Judgemental asks, "Have you had any contact with demons since your redemption?"

This is one of those points where it's appropriate to complicate the limited utility of yes-or-no questions, even with a Seraph reading the answer. No, I haven't seen or spoken to a demon--unless you count me--since I woke up to see Penny trying to throttle a Mercurian. (I'm going to treasure that memory for some time.) Yes, I sent a message to a demon just days ago, and paid quite a lot to make sure it would get to him in particular without any risk of it being followed by hostile forces. Yes and no are both _true_ , depending on how narrowly we're defining our verbs.

"I haven't left Heaven yet," I say, "but I sent a letter to a friend to let him know I wouldn't be stopping by again."

"Your partner?" asks the Seraph. (Leading the witness, your honor.) It's a pretty thing, black and white rings with some interesting silver lines around eyes and and on the tips of its feathers. If I have to have Judges looming over me, at least the view is good.

"God, _no_. He'll figure out the details himself when he gets out of Trauma, which I expect he's out of by now. A Free Lilim who used to do book club things with me. I wanted to let him know first, in case the Game comes sniffing around. It's harder to tangle someone up if they're ready for you."

"Book club?" asks the Ofanite. She's a blazing wheel of fire who seems like she ought to be setting the office alight, but all she's doing is drifting back and forth restlessly in her position by my left ear.

"Yeah, you know. The classics. He didn't get much of that background in Shal-Mari, and my partner wasn't the type to compare and contrast Brontes." I smile up at them, all teeth. "But other than _that_ , no contact. No dissonance, though I'd be hard pressed to acquire any around here."

"It's not impossible," says the Ofanite in a mild way that doesn't fool me at all.

"Sure. I could make stupid promises, or fail to follow through on reasonable ones. Haven't yet, wasn't really planning on taking it up."

"Or you could stop moving." The Ofanite is not the most fidgety I've met, nor has she traveled very far from me since the interrogation begun, but she's moving more than I am.

I let my vessel image fade out to look at my own rings, and the churn thereof. "Hasn't been a problem yet. Honestly, I haven't figured out how to get these circles to _stop_ , so I'm not expecting one."

The ibex does not look satisfied by this answer, but with a face like that, she never looks satisfied. Poor Cherub, looking perpetually judgmental. I suppose it saves effort. The Seraph, who perhaps feels the same way, lowers its head somewhat nearer to mine. I don't think they're actually used to interviewing people on the floor. "Have you tried to stop?"

What an interesting question.

"No," I say, "though it's like--phantom limb syndrome, you know?" I don't think they know, or at least the Cherub and the Seraph are staring at me like they don't see what I mean by this. I'm not any good at reading expression on giant flaming hoops yet, so I couldn't say with the Ofanite. "It doesn't matter if I try to wiggle my fingers or not. They're not there. Which is distracting on its own. Does that feeling wear off? I mean, you people _have_ spoken to ex-Calabim before about this kind of thing, right? Personally. You three."

"I have," says the Seraph. The Cherub inclines her head, so that's two out of three. "Many of them abhor any pause or delay in motion for some time."

"Huh," I say. "I guess that makes sense. Redemption being something of the ultimate act of rebellion and all that." I get a pained expression out of the Cherub again. "I just figured they weren't paying enough attention to the fourth dimension. I mean, that's what Ofanim are all about, right? Change in position within the dimensions. It can't just be physical movement, or they wouldn't be so into cars. You're just _sitting_ in those, you know. A few hand motions, move your feet a little..." I wave a hand. "Less than I'm doing here, most of the time. Especially with cruise control. But their position is moving. So it's not about making the vessel act, but about moving its location. And given the speed thing, well, you can't express speed except by bringing in time. All the slippery dodging some Ofanim do, that's not just moving, and it's not just moving fast. It's about being in the right place in the right time. And the thing is, you're here for this interview, and I'm here for it, so I'm in the right place at the right time. Furthermore, I can't _stop_ moving through time, so it makes sense for me to lock onto this location in space, so that I continue to be in the right place, so long as the time remains right."

"Do you actually believe all of that," asks the Ofanite, "or are you just having fun justifying it?" There's something about her voice, but I can't place it yet. I've run into a few Ofanim in time, though--

God, I hope she's not _that_ one. (What are the chances? Pretty good.)

"About fifty-fifty." I make a frame with my fingers to see her through. "How much distance would you expect an average Ofanite to cover in what period of time to be at an ideal base speed?"

"Do you intend to spend much of your time in sophistry?" asks the Cherub. There is just something about Cherubim of Judgment that makes them the least friendly people in all of creation. You'd think that would go to the Malakim of Judgment, or maybe Seraphim of War, but no. Cherubim of Judgment. Go figure.

"I don't think Trade recruited me for my ability to punch things."

"That's not an answer to her question," says the Seraph.

"Is too." I decide not to offer to spell it out in small words for them. They don't seem like a crowd that would appreciate that. "What are you actually looking to get out of this interview? Because if we could work that out, then maybe we could arrange for that to happen, instead of circling around the point like this."

"We are here to determine your current integration into Heaven, and your new role within it," says the Seraph. That's rather more direct than I expected, but, hey, Seraphim. Most of them aren't as sneaky as War. "How well do you think you're doing within those parameters?"

It sounds a little testy, and I think that's a question it would rather not ask directly. After all, the best I can give them is my _opinion_ , whereas they'd rather assemble the answer from more facts. But even most of the facts are made of opinion on something like this. "I'm suffering from massive culture shock. Heaven is better than Hell makes it out to be, but that's just speaking of the parts of it I've seen, and god knows my own perceptions are pretty subjective and limited, especially as of a week into this. I don't know how most of it works. People don't act the way I expect. And _you_ people." I swing a hand around to indicate each of the three Judges in turn. "You're just asking me questions. You could get a lot less pleasant about it, since I'm not being the sweetest interview subject either, but Penny assures me I'm not in any danger from you if I haven't done anything wrong, and I actually believe him. Do you have any idea how weird that is?"

"Some," say the Cherub.

Huh. Maybe she's spoken with a lot of redeemed. But it does make a man wonder.

"Do you think you've done anything wrong?" asks the Seraph, who has apparently decided this is the better tactic for getting useful answers out of me. It's probably right on that count.

"Since I got to Heaven? Nothing more wrong than some social missteps. I've been a little impolite and a little annoying, and I wrote a few people some very rude cards. But since everything I wrote to people was _true_ , and not coughing up the sort of secrets I'm not allowed to give out, I can't see how that's wrong by the larger judicial standards of Heaven. I know you don't regulate against impolite. I've met Warriors."

I wish I could read Ofanite body language, because I think she's amused. "Since you got to Heaven," she says. "What about before?"

"If you're going to hold what I did before redemption against me..." I spread my hands wide across the floor, and blink lazily up at them. "That'd be enough of a problem for me that there'd be no reason for you to go through these other questions."

"It's more concerning that you haven't made a clean break with those associations," says the Ofanite.

I close my eyes. (I can see everything around me if I let myself. I am three rings of fire, spinning and interlocking and weaving through myself, and I could not more stop than I could cease to be made of these flames. Eyelids aren't relevant anymore. But it's nice to pretend.) "There's no such thing as a clean break," I say. "You could ask Blandine about that."

"Are those remaining connections a danger to you?" The Seraph is clinical and as free of warmth as an Elohite. I take that as a sort of kindness, really. I don't need a Judge trying to empathize with me. They're doing their jobs, and I...am working my way towards being able to do mine.

Can't do a whole lot of good for Trade until I have my feet under me again.

"Some of them are. Some of them were dangerous to me before I even left." I turn the question over, and try the angle they wanted on it before it gets asked again. "I have no intention of picking up dissonance or betraying my coworkers because of old connections. This may be the fourth Word I've served, but I'm really hoping this one will stick."

"What's different about this one," asks the Seraph, "that would keep you from leaving again?"

There are so many proper respectable answers that aren't going to be true if I say them. _This time I'm on the right side of the war,_ or _An Archangel is nothing like a Prince,_ both of which are more or less true, but...they're not an answer to that question. And much as I like the sentimentality of it, _I finally fell in love with someone who can love me back_ isn't the answer either. Not all of it. I've run away from people I loved, and who loved me.

"I don't know," I say. "I mean--it's different. I'm a lot less worried about this Superior reducing me to component parts than usual, which is nice, right? I have some friends here who aren't likely to dump me into Trauma to make them look good. There are plenty of reasons to prefer the new Word to any of the old ones, and between you and me, I was never a big fan of either of the two in the middle anyway. All that taken as said, liking things isn't what keeps an angel stapled to Heaven. Demons _like_ things just fine, and we're quite capable of doing things we dislike but think are necessary on both sides as well. So I can hope and I can try, but if you're looking for the magic change that guarantees I'll stay here forever, I don't have that for you. Maybe you can tell me if you know what it is."

It would be nice if there were another question here, to move on with, but instead the whole damn triad lets what I've said sit in the room between us.

I open my eyes, for whatever that's worth.

"I wanted something reliable and not terrible," I say, "which you would think wouldn't be so much to ask for, but Hell's really low on supply when it comes to that combination. So I'm here. I've _been_ over there. I don't particularly want to go back. I suppose if everything here fell apart entirely, the other side might not seem any worse, but..." I wave a hand instead of trying to explain the complications there. The problem isn't that my ex-partner is _worse_ , but that all his best traits are what make him a danger, and that's why I finally have enough sense to stay away from him. But it's a bad idea to bring him up explicitly. They've let that question drop for a while. "Didn't Trade copy you on that file I wrote up? There's enough detail in there that I really don't think I'd get a good reception if I showed up near Theft again."

"It didn't seem complete," says the Cherub.

"Of course it's not _complete_. I trust you people to do certain things well, but I don't trust you to be discreet about following up on that kind of information. If I gave you information for every damn safehouse I'd stayed at, Tether I knew the existence of, and demon I'd associated with, and then you went poking at all of them...places would get _razed_."

"We do know some subtlety," says the Ofanite, and I'm almost certain she's the Ofanite of Judgment I've met twice before, and had rather hoped not to meet a third time. But it's not really the moment to ask. "If you're that concerned about giving us everything, how did you decide what you would send along?"

"I gave you all the safehouses that had facilities clearly designed for keeping people confined. And all the Habbalah I could remember the details on, because fuck that whole Band. Look, there were notes. I figured out how to get the annotations working in that program. Did you not read the notes?"

"I read the hardcopy," the Seraph admits, though it does not attempt to sound apologetic about this in the slightest. "Do you intend to provide more details later?"

"Hadn't really decided yet. If you need to ask questions about specific places and people you were already wondering about, go ahead. Those I can answer." Though I'm not sure I'll give them much if they start asking about the Free Lilim who I used to deal with. I haven't got much respect for Freedom as a Word, the more I've seen it in action, but those people always dealt with me fairly. Might as well keep those lines open, at least for emergencies. If any Word in Heaven can appreciate a little side dealing with Freedom, it's Trade.

"Will you cooperate with Judgment in the future?" the Seraph asks.

"Probably."

"What will you do next?" asks the Ofanite. There are ways in angelic to specify what sort of time frame she's talking about, and she's chosen not to use those.

"When you're done in here? Text Penny, and see if he wants me to bring him a coffee."

"And then?"

"Go harass the Sword about a favor I want from them."

"And then?" the Ofanite asks. I think her triad would be ready to go, but they're not in such a hurry that they're going to rush her toddler-esque series of questions.

"See what I need to do so that I can get back to work," I say. "My Archangel said he had work for me to do. Lying around here isn't getting it done any faster."

"We will contact you," the Seraph says, "if we have any further questions."

"If I have further questions, should I contact you?"

"If you believe we are the best equipped to provide you with the answers," says the Seraph, "you may as well." It inclines its head to me before it goes. The Cherub's polite enough to do the same, and the Ofanite...doesn't linger. I almost thought she would. But she spins away like the oncoming justice of the lord.

I'm glad not to be in her path anymore.


	8. An Interlude, In Which Heaven Has Something Similar, But Not Identical, To Google

does it ever rain in heaven

heavenly weather forecast

maps with schedules for where a man can find some clouds around here

heavenly cloud formation patterns

water cycle in heaven

where do you even get milk from around here anyway

can animals produce offspring after death

can animals produce offspring after death in heaven while having souls here

bees

bees in heaven

how does a bee end up fulfilling its destiny anyway

best heavenly barbecue

best heavenly barbecue not in the grove

best non-vegetarian heavenly barbecue not in the grove

what is going on with cows in heaven

how does a cow fulfil its destiny

destiny animals joint projects

does animals show up to yell at you if you try to have a dog in heaven

best heavenly beer ratings

coffee gift packages

is caffeine obligatory for traders

how did trade get anything done before coffee spread to all the inhabited continents

cocoa

growing cocoa beans in an office

why does flowers have a monopoly on everything plant-related around here

its not like im trying to start a war with coffee anyway

is this why war is drinking fermented milk

you would think lightning would have designed a smarter search program by now

how to turn off lightning helpful search tips

how to convince this computer i am not a reliever

i swear i can find a hammer

thank you

greeting card restock bundles cheap

heavenly culturally appropriate apology gifts

heavenly culturally appropriate apology gifts for cherubim of judgment


	9. In Which Very Little Is Revealed

The difference between the abbey where Nik is currently under a peculiar sort of house arrest and Litheroy's Abbey is not merely one of capital letters, though that rather underscores the scale involved. Nik's abbey is strictly gender-segregated, and full of deliberate barriers. Not just the walls and the doors, but the bricks laid around flowerbeds and the high, narrow windows on the outside that don't admit anyone larger than a reliever. It politely demonstrates that there are people who ought to be inside, and those who ought not, and maybe you should consider which category you fall into before advancing.

Litheroy's Abbey, which is his Cathedral in about the same way Abaddon is Saminga's Principality, and not at all in the way Shal-Mari is Andrealphus's, has managed to acquire a timeless look despite _clearly_ having been built in the 15th century Western European architectural style. And more to the point, it has no doors. I'm rather fond of Revelation as a concept, but I would go stark raving mad if I tried to live in a place like this. Wandering around here, I could walk in on anyone. Or the reverse. It's not even comfortable to visit.

Comfortable or not, I feel I have certain obligations here. (The right place to be, appropriate time being somewhat unspecified but _sooner_ rather than _maybe next year_.) That's what has me strolling through the grounds, hands in my pockets while I try not to look too much like a tourist. I do have business here.

Two relievers drift toward me, hands tangled together, as I skirt a duck pond full of actual, I kid you not, ducks. (Which are not the source of any duck served in Heaven's restaurants; apparently Creation has that kind of thing covered, which is awfully convenient for this place. I'm not sure if everyone here would turn vegetarian, or skip eating, or just shrug and figure the ducks were made for eating, if there weren't a way to make that kind of thing out of nothing but Essence itself, here in Heaven.) The leftmost reliever, larger and brighter than the other, wiggles its fingers at me. "Can we help you?"

"That's a sort of metaphysical question to start a conversation with," I say.

"In the practical and immediate sense," says the other reliever. "Spiritual help, and overall personal betterment, is sort of beyond us right now."

"Maybe later!" says the first, upping its wattage slightly.

"Maybe later," agrees the second, "but for now, were you looking for anything in particular?"

"We're very good at helping people find things."

"Things that are in the Abbey, that is."

"Yes, it's harder to find the things that aren't in here, though the searching is more interesting then."

"Though sometimes it's also hard to find things in here," says the second reliever, "because people don't actually know what they're looking for, or are looking for the wrong thing entirely. Wanting is awfully subjective."

"I'm not sure I so much _want_ anything in here as feel I ought to find it," I say, because if they drift away in this conversation I'll have to ask one of the adults around here for directions instead. And most of the adults in immediate eyeshot are Malakim and Elohim. (Well. One of each, and two Seraphim deeply distracted by what looks to be a crossword puzzle.) "It's the locus of a Tether of Revelation."

"Top-end locus?" The first reliever drifts in a circle, upside-down and just as comfortable in that direction as the reverse. Children who grow up weightless must find the corporeal very strange, if they get that far. "The path is always clear. Can't you find it?"

"Maybe he wants a guide for reasons of formality," says the second. "Some people do. Or to be certain."

"Or maybe he can't find it," says the first. "Can you find it? Can't you?"

"I'm not sure that's polite to ask," says the second reliever, in a way that does not imply in the slightest that it believes this should be a reason _not_ to do the asking. "I should ask a Mercurian."

"Or an Elohite."

"They're not interchangeable, you know."

"It depends on what you need them for, doesn't it? If you only need someone of about the right height, or who has about ten fingers--"

"I meant in a more _general_ sense."

"But then no one is interchangeable, given individuality. Except maybe the angels who stand at the gates of Hell? Are they?"

"They have separate names. They can't be _completely_ interchangeable."

"But _general_ isn't _complete_ , just...general. Right? They're not synonyms."

"They could keep going all day," says a Malakite at my shoulder. I do not choke on anything, since I have wisely not brought beverages or cigarettes to this place. "And they might."

"We might," says one of the relievers; they've spun in enough slow circles that I'm no longer sure which is which.

"We're helpful!" says the other.

"We're _sometimes_ helpful."

"We're sometimes helpful!"

"What Tether were you looking for?" the Malakite asks me. "I can take you there, while they work on defining words more precisely."

"Angelic doesn't seem like the best language for philosophy," I say. "The intended meaning of another speaker is too often perfectly clear."

"You might be surprised." The Malakite waves a hand at the relievers, and they dart away, skimming across the surface of the duck pond like dragonflies. "All the Tethers are this direction."

I could just _not_ follow them. But that would be, much like asking why an Ofanite can't work out where he's supposed to get to, rude. So I shove my hands deeper into my pockets, and walk beside the nice Malakite who intends to help me find my way around here. At least with Revelation there's not a lot of risk of stupid tricks like with the Wind.

Like all Malakim, they're dark. Not the inverse of bright, the way Impudites are. (Mercurians glow slightly, while Impudites just make everything around them look a bit duller and less exciting than that Impudite. It's a sufficiently subtle trick that I think some demons never even realize that's what's going on.) Dark like the shadows you only get when the sun's out in full force. Their chains ought to look ridiculous--cartoon ghosts wear chains, or people with very specific sexual preferences--but I'm not sure angels can look ridiculous in their natural state. A Malakite's chains seem as much a part of their body as a Cherub's wings (always looking natural even when attached to a body that shouldn't support another set of limbs) or a Mercurian's glow.

Natural is such a loaded word. I suppose if it's going to be appropriate anywhere, it's in Heaven, where most of these Choirs existed before tiny fuzzy animals were outliving the dinosaurs.

"Do you know the continent?" the Malakite asks. They have an easy stride, taking me around the ponds and along the paths of this part of the grounds instead of rising up to cut a straight line towards the abbey wing we're approaching. "Or the name of the Seneschal, or any of that sort of detail?"

"It's an office building somewhere in North Carolina. Part of an office building, even, and the only staff member I spoke with there was human."

"The Courier office," says the Malakite. They take a left at the next path intersection. It's a little strange that shadowy feet should crunch on gravel, but then, so do mine, and my vessel image is less real than their body is. "Not one of our usual ones, but that's part of what makes it endearing. What's your business there?"

"Passing on some thanks for unexpected help, I guess. I think I owe the Seneschal a favor."

The Malakite smiles sideways at me. I can see that much, despite the shadows. "Do you or don't you?"

"I say that I do, but I've gotten some pushback on the matter of favors lately. So if I think I owe her a favor, and she doesn't, do I or don't I?"

"Good question." They nod to a Seraph in passing, and take me into a corridor broader than a strictly accurate rendition of this century's architecture would allow. "That takes you back into philosophy, if you're willing to entertain some of it. As I understand it--and you're a Trader, right? so correct me if this sounds wrong--debt is incurred when people do more, or less, than what's expected of them. So when you have a mismatch between people about what's expected, that confuses the issue. Left here at the tapestries."

The tapestries depict an archeologist (or treasure hunter, there being not a lot of difference between the two in some eras) cracking open the seal of a pyramid's central burial chamber. Not what I might have picked for a depiction of Revelation at its finest. But it's not _my_ Word to understand.

Trade is, as much as I can have a Word without having one bound to my soul personally. And as such, I ought to get a better handle on what it means. Beyond the basic _Thou shalt keep thy promises, or else._

"Yes and no. You can be in debt for what's expected, too. In some societies there's debt that's absolutely mandatory. You owe service or respect or financial support to your parents. Or to your children, for that matter. And if you don't give it, that's..." I wave a hand. "Debt, or something like it. Breach of unwritten social contract. Conversely, if you're an exceptional parent, it doesn't come across as something they owe you a favor for. You don't tip for parenting. So the two aren't exactly parallel."

"So what's a favor?"

"When you do something for a person that they wouldn't have been justified in demanding of you."

"And the justified part--"

"Is where it gets subjective. Assuming no Lilim are involved. Lilim can trace out the exact boundaries of debt and favors the way--Malakim get virtue. Presumably."

The Malakite waves me into another corridor, the way they might open a door for me if this place had any. "Presumably. It's subjective, after all."

"Virtue?"

"Yes. We're not so near to the Symphony as you are. You get where places are quite specifically. Like the truth Seraphim get, but all..." They snap their fingers, just like a human. "How would you describe the difference?"

"The truth of space and matter, as opposed to the truth of...hell, I'm not sure. The Symphony itself."

"Close enough for the conversation. Yes. Seraphim are up there looking at what _is_ , Cherubim have an extremely focused _what is_ for their attuned, Ofanim have a broad _where is_ for themselves and other things, and then by the time you reach Elohim, they're asking for...true opinions, essentially. What a person really feels. By the time you reach us?" They smile in their shadows, and I can still hear their footsteps on the stone as we walk side by side. "What's the honor in someone's heart? It's subjective, that's what it is. You can tell more about a person by what they've picked as their most and least honorable acts than from having seen them commit those acts without that context."

I wonder what mine are. But if I ask the Malakite will tell me, so I say, "I didn't expect to run into cultural relativity in this Cathedral."

"It's part of reality," says the Malakite. "Seraphim don't get to ignore opinions just because there's no absolute truth to those, either. Loss of nuance is a quick route down. Much as we might like everything to be simple."

"Would you?"

They hesitate a moment, in step and thought alike. "It would make many things easier," they say.

"And make some people happier, sure. But that's not what I asked."

"You're nosy," they say, "and a bit pushy. You'd fit in well around here. The answer is that I don't have enough information to know which I _ought_ to want, so I'm inclined to stick with what we have already."

"Because it's known?"

"Because we're better at dealing with the consequences." They nod to the next blank doorway. "The Tether you want is through there. My name's Gleir. Yours?"

"Leo." There's a reliever just through the door, ready to take messages. It can wait a moment longer. "How did you know I was with Trade?"

"Educated guess. This Tether doesn't get a lot of traffic." Gleir shrugs, a liquid motion that wouldn't quite work if they were as human-like as Mercurians. "Two Traders came through here, not long ago."

"Revelation must have the most active gossip network of any Word in Heaven."

"We like to call it information exchange in a social context." Gleir the Malakite, who probably knows more about me than I'd like, grins at last. "Or sometimes we call it gossip. Tell me how it goes?"

"A favor in exchange for the directions?"

"There's no _debt_ ," they say, "but I'd like to know. Goes with the Word."

"Sure," I say. I can taste the difference between intention and promise, and I am not crossing the line yet. (But let your intentions be true. They have to be, to speak them like this. And we can't all be Sean, who intends from one minute to the next whatever seems most useful.) "I'll try to let you know."


	10. In Which War Explains Various Topics To Me

It turns out that the only way to find Sean in Heaven is to _stop_ trying to get in contact with him. Not that I was exactly looking to meet up with him; I finally get into a part of reality where I have a decent chance of landing a punch on him, and the place is suffused with heavenly peace. Figures. So why bother to do more than send snippy notes? But I'd be lying (which is hard to do here, even in the privacy of your own head) if I said I wasn't curious.

All that, and I walk right past him on the way to Riccarda's place. (I don't get the tent thing. Tents aren't residences. They barely even count as architecture. But in War and Trade alike, a lot of people seem to believe that cloth walls are the best thing since the keystone arch. At least it's not spires.) It's a split second before I recognize him. I've only seen his true form briefly, and I was--well. Distracted. A whole lot of interesting people ran through that room while I was trying not to melt down on the carpet.

But there's no mistaking his expression, or the way he stands, even if he's busy surveying a pair of wrestling Mercurians like he's the best judge of their work. The smugness carries through to any form he wears. "It's nice to know the stupid facial hair is more of an affectation than a lifestyle," I say to him, and keep on walking.

He catches up with me two steps later. "Leo! Nice to see you around." The beauty of angelic is that he can say that honestly and it _still_ sounds mocking. But of course he'd be talented with the language; it's native for him. "Finally came by to say thank you?"

"I sent you a fucking card, didn't I?" I smile at him, all teeth. "It's never nice to see you. But I do owe you."

He keeps pace with me easily. He's taller than me again; I could really get tired of that. "That might actually be worth something now," he says. "How are you liking the new you?"

"It was always worth something." More likely than not, I could outpace Sean here. But that would require putting some speed into a task that doesn't demand it. "Which you might have found out if you'd ever bothered to accrue one."

"Didn't I help you out with that thing with the Samingans? And out of the pure goodness of my heart."

"You're a Mercurian, Sean." I duck by reflex and habit as a cloud of relievers zips past overhead, though none of them would've run into me. They're not gremlins, and this isn't anything like any part of Hell. "You don't get bonus points for trying to save humanity."

"What about the part where I loaned you a gun, and helped you get out of there alive?" There's something sharp behind his smile that I can't identify; if we were our old selves, I'd say it was the part where he doesn't trust me. Or vice versa.

Well, maybe he still doesn't trust me. I certainly still don't trust him, even with the language we're speaking. Plenty of statements are _opinion_ , even in Heaven, and with him even promises don't get any stronger than that.

"I dragged _you_ out of a pile of humans. So I think we're even on that one." And there's more I might say on that whole incident, but I don't think I can be honest and polite at the same time if I go on, so...it's amazing what this language does for convincing me to shut up early. Give me a few more months and I might even solve my issues with authority figures.

I do have an appointment with someone in the Sword to talk about Nik's parole tomorrow. So...probably not soon enough, that.

"Maybe you should get bonus points for doing anything helpful while you were a demon," Sean says airily. He drifts along beside me, feet not quite touching the ground as he walks. Quieter that way, and a reminder of where we are. "Since it's clearly not in the job description. Ten points for giving me a hand, a thousand for trying to keep humans alive."

"I was just doing my job. No extra points for that one."

"Following orders," Sean says, with a mocking lilt that--doesn't bother me as much as it used to, actually. He's trying to get a rise out of me, but so what? I'd do the same to him.

"I suppose I _could_ have told my Prince that I wasn't interested in keeping humanity alive, and the results would have been pretty entertaining for people who weren't me. Since you've got so much more experience as an angel, you tell me: would it have been more ethical of me to reject those orders on principle because of who's delivering them?"

"You should've told me what was going on when you called," Sean says. He's not the sort of person to actually think these things through, which is, I suppose, one route to existential satisfaction. "There's this little thing called backup that some of us love working with, given advance notice."

"And there's this little thing called 'getting shot' that I try to avoid. For some reason, the chances of it happening went up every time you had friends around."

"Could've shot you all on my own," Sean points out. He never stops sounding smug; I wonder what he's hiding behind that. "And I didn't, which _isn't_ standard for Warriors. Even those of us who are Mercurians. So I should get points, if we're counting them up, for how often I held off. Imagine how much trouble you could've saved yourself if you'd taken my first offer."

"Imagine how much trouble you could've saved yourself if you'd kept your first agreement."

"You came back to work for us anyway," Sean says, voice pitched rather lower before, "now didn't you?"

"Mmhmm. With an eye on the exits, because I knew Heaven was made of untrustworthy bastards who'd fuck me over the first time they found it convenient."

"Only some of Heaven." He taps me in the shoulder with a fist; I suspect that'd be a much harder punch on the corporeal, and meant about the same way. "You fell in with another part of it, so it all worked out eventually."

"The interesting thing about this language of yours," I say, "is that you can't speak with more confidence in a statement than you actually have."

"Language of _yours_ ," Sean says, amused, because that way he can step around what I'm implying. "It's yours too, now. Angel, angelic. Goes with the territory."

"It's not my native language, and it never will be." This would, in fact, be an easier discussion to have in a less precise language. Angelic always knows when it's being ambiguous, and so does everyone hearing it. I check the map on my phone. "That's the thing about being native. You can't _become_ it. You either start out that way, or you never get it."

"And here you go getting all meta on what's a straightforward process," Sean says. "Angel or not is one of the binary states. You were something else, and now you're in the right place. But of course you'd try to make it something complicated."

"Of course," I say. "How much do you think I'd change, just by redeeming?"

He laughs shortly. "More," he says. "You're a completely new person, Leo. Maybe you should stop wearing the old habits."

"I'm myself. If I'd stopped, there'd be no meaningful difference between redemption and death."

"Still the same Forces once you--"

"Did you know," I ask, before he can go somewhere unfortunate with that sentence, "that I was made entirely out of the recycled Forces of another demon? If you pull someone's Forces entirely apart, and put them back together again in the shape of a different type of celestial, you do not, in fact, have the same person as before." I pocket my phone, and correct course. "That's death. This is redemption. It's different."

"That's demons. You're an angel. _Different_."

"I went to rehab, not a reeducation camp. Maybe it works differently in War."

"Snide remarks about War while in the Groves," Sean says. "That'll go over well."

"What are people going to do? Punch me?"

I smile at him and he smiles right back, and I think our expressions are very similar right now. If this were the corporeal, someone probably would be swinging soon. (I need to get Penny something nice, for at least _trying_ to hit this guy. I appreciate the thought.)

"You're still a contrary little punk," Sean says. "So I guess you're right about not having changed much."

"Hey, I learned from the best--or at least the most conveniently available--that Heaven doesn't have any requirement that angels be nice. Or polite. Or trustworthy."

"You just keep coming back to that one."

"Which one?" Riccarda asks, proving that it _is_ possible to sneak up behind a Mercurian of War even in his natural habitat.

"It's an old argument." I try a nicer smile on for Riccarda, who's big enough to loop around the both of us and stare down at us at the same time. "I know I'm not late."

"I said to myself, now, what sort of impression do I give when _waiting_ for an Ofanite? Especially when there are so many distractions on the way to my place." She twists away to spiral in front of us. "If I'd known the two of you would be flirting on the way, I would've hurried more. Or brought a camera."

"We were _not_ ," Sean says, and that's the first time I've seen a Mercurian's wings ruffle up like that. And here I was thinking it was just Seraph body language.

"It's always been a sort of slap slap, kiss kiss sort of thing," I say, "except with blackmail and threats in the place of kissing."

"For the record," Sean says, "the blackmail went both ways."

"I'll bet it did," Riccarda says, and--well, Seraphim don't have eyebrows to waggle, in the strictest sense, but the expression was about the same. "We're going to try out some exciting beers. Do you want to come along and disapprove in person, or should we schedule a few more minutes for your disapproval and then say goodbye?"

"I don't disapprove of beer." Sean manages to sound pained. "Just--him."

"There's nothing wrong with Traders that a few self-defense courses won't fix." Riccarda winks at me with her lefthand eyes. "Though I can't say I approve of their coffee fixation. _Flowers_ can get all excited about plants if they want to, but you'd think Trade would broaden their own horizons a little more. What is it with mercantile pursuits and liquid stimulants? Something about trying to stay sharp for the good deals?"

"I'd call it cultural." I'd rather not stand in the middle of the Grove talking coffee, so I pick up the pace toward Riccarda's tent again. "Word culture being some combination of dissonance condition, Rites, and just how it's grown up over time. Coffee happens to be what stuck with Trade. I'm pretty sure you Warriors have cultural patterns that aren't tied to any direct exhortations or prohibitions from your Archangel."

"The yelling is tied to that attunement," Riccarda says thoughtfully, "but the drinking isn't, and we do like our drinking. Now, has Fides--"

"Just call me Sean. Please."

"Not until you make it your actual name," Riccarda says, smugger than even he can manage, "which you _haven't_ , last I checked. Don't be so stuffy. Who cares if Judgment can track what you've been doing down on the corporeal, and attach it to who you are here? They don't do anything worse than insult people and waste time."

"Or charge you with crimes--"

"See the bit about 'wasting time'." Riccarda turns herself about until she's a half circle around me, keeping pace--and drawing a line with her body between me and Sean. "Besides, it's fun to argue with them. Now what would a nice Ofanite like this have blackmailed an upstanding Mercurian like you over?"

"Hey. 'Nice'? Really?"

"Much as I hate to agree with you," Sean says, "you're right. You're not nice at all."

Riccarda snickers to herself. I can't imagine Penny making a sound like that. "So just tell me who won."

There is a brief, awkward pause as Sean and I try to figure out the answer to that.

"Depends on which time," I say at last. "I won when I didn't die, and he won when he got concessions from--various people. Besides, some of it we're not allowed to talk about. Hey, Sean, what happens when you break a Divine Contract when you're not on the corporeal? Does it punch you in the soul, or just wait for you to take on your vessel again before the whiplash hits?"

"You're the Trader," Sean says. "You tell me."

"I figured you'd known from personal experience by now."

Sean flashes me a tight, nasty smile. "I plead the Fifth."

"Pretty sure we're outside the jurisdiction for that one."

"See," Riccarda says, "this still sounds like flirting to me."

"If I were flirting," I say, "I'd spend more time talking about his stupid facial hair back on the corporeal. And he's not my type."

"Thank _God_ ," Sean mutters, while Riccarda asks in the least innocent voice possible, "What is your type, Leo?"

"Seraphim," Sean says, with an eye roll, while I'm hesitating over the fact that _Balseraphs_ is still true enough to be the first thing that springs to mind and not the sort of thing I want to explain to anyone here. "So you're in luck. Riccarda is into Ofanim, Leo, which must mean you're in luck too, if you know what I mean."

"I could happily go my entire life without ever seeing you make that hand gesture again," I say.

"Then we shouldn't invite him over for beer." Riccarda wraps herself into a wheel that's spinning parallel and in time to one of my rings, wings spread. "If you get him drunk enough, you can even get a few songs out of him. He knows all the verses for 'To Anacreon In Heaven'. There was this one time with a Cherub of the Sword who had issues with some of the old Greek gods, back in the Marches, when--"

"I was _there_ ," Sean snaps, "so it's not like I need to sit through the explanation again." He stalks away, the very picture of an affronted Warrior. With enormous white feathered wings. I can't help but find that a little ridiculous; even with a gun holstered at his hip, a Mercurian doesn't look quite right as a Warrior.

"He's been so touchy lately," Riccarda says, and shrugs herself back out of the spin. "If he ever cares to explain himself, maybe he'll get some sympathy for it. Do you think it's because of you?"

Trust a Seraph to ask the obvious question that's not entirely polite. "Maybe. I don't know. Every time he wasn't trying to kill me, he was telling me I ought to come work for the other side. I finally do that, and he throws a fit because--I don't know. I'm not the sort of Ofanite he expected me to be, I guess." When I shrug, I almost miss wings. Almost. The vessel I'm projecting feels more real than my Calabite shape has for a long time, and... I can't say that I miss it, except in the way I'd miss a piece of old furniture that finally got hauled away. I just keep expecting something that's not there anymore. "If he wanted me to get fluffier on redemption, he should've pointed me at Flowers. Or tried talking an Impudite into redeeming, instead."

I wonder if Lanthano's found out what I did yet, and if he cares. Probably it's better for everyone if he doesn't care. Impudites are pretty good at getting over things; they get attached easily, and let go easily, because they know there'll always be more people for them to play with if they look around again.

"Mercurians can be a little odd about the redeemed," Riccarda says. (Some Mercurians, some of the time, an observed pattern rather than anything she has statistics on. Speaking this language is like standing under a waterfall of information. I can't even catch it all as it's delivered to me.) "It's that swap from someone so thoroughly at odds with the nature of the universe that violence is finally appropriate, to someone on your own side and in tune with the Symphony. That and all the lingering connections to people on the other side. If you went out and shot a few people with him, he'd probably get it over it, poor boy, but I'm not getting the impression that you're signing up for the more militant arm of Trade."

I try to picture a militant arm of Trade, and all I can come up with is a lot of Malakim in business suits, bludgeoning people with their high-priced leather attache cases. "Probably not. I was never much of a combat Calabite to start with, unless you talk about dropping buildings on people."

"Did you?"

"...well, not often _on_ people." I stifle a grin. "Maybe the once. I had to write apology notes for that one."

"What sort of people were in there?" Riccarda asks, and I find I'm picking up my pace to keep up with her, now. She uses her wings like rudders: no flapping, but they extend when she wants to turn, as if she's swimming through the air.

"A triad of Judgment and a whole lot of Malakim of--Fire, I think? Plus me. It wasn't exactly one of my more successful projects."

"No humans?"

"Maybe some downstairs. Not many." Between the fuzziness that comes of whatever happened right before I hit Trauma, and not having thought about it in ages, I find that I can't actually remember if there was anyone else in there at the time. The one Hellsworn I killed, and...no. I don't remember. Which is starting to bother me. "I got better about staying out of that kind of trouble once I left Fire."

"It's in the nature of War for people to die," Riccarda says, "which Mercurians come to terms with--differently, right? They can't all be the diplomats and peace-makers, even if diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means. But I don't think that's what he's been fussing over, because you, Tradeboy, don't come across as the murderous type."

"Neither do you," I say, "and you _do_ go murder people. Presumably the deserving type."

"There's murder and then there's murder," Riccarda says. "We try to keep the bullets pointed towards the sort of people who ought to be introduced to them, but we don't always succeed. Even aside from some disagreement on _ought_. You should hear some of the arguments about acceptable levels of collateral damage and uncertainty in target selection."

"Thrown crockery?"

"I saw someone lose a vessel over that argument once," Riccarda says. "An Elohite was demonstrating her point."

"Ouch."

"A Malakite's vessel," Riccarda says, "and she _did_ pay more attention to the Elohite's reasoning after that demonstration, so it was a good trade-off. I could go on, but inside politics aren't half as interesting as beer. Speaking of which, the bar's up there."

Up is bad, as it suggests there'll be a bunch of fucking Windies in the place. But I did agree to this not-officially-a-date, on the principle of getting out and about instead of letting angry respondents to my cards show up at Penny's office while I'm actually there. Maybe I should get my own place just so that they can go looking for me _there_.

Besides, Penny does have work to do, and I get bored spinning a chair around in his office, waiting for one of my appointments to come up.

"Hey, Riccarda," I say, because there's no actual effort in _up_ compared to meandering forward, so it's no harder to speak than before. One of the many ways in which Heaven feels unreal, now and again. (It's not a dream, but it's not the same as the corporeal. Things that are true stay true, there. Physics isn't optional.) "How long has this place been around?" I wave a hand to indicate the Groves as a whole.

"Since around the time War had Servitors who needed a place to exist in," Riccarda says. (Supposition, based on implication. Not personally witnessed fact, or the memory of another reporting that exactly. This language makes even Seraphim sound less certain--no. More precisely certain, whatever the degree.) "Nice place. Leafy. Feels like home. Why do you ask?"

"I was wondering how the trees worked. This looks like a standard modern oak, but your Archangel was around before there _were_ oaks. So did the trees of the Groves show up before the versions on the corporeal? Or did they shift as the ones on the corporeal evolved? Or is this all just an overlay for what's really there, based on what someone whose context is the corporeal plane can best understand?"

"You should harass people in Lightning for answers," Riccarda says. "They love questions like that. Or Destiny, except they'll probably just tell you to look things up. Sometimes those people..." She gives another one of those rippling shrugs, which I interpret in this context as having a disapproving opinion she doesn't feel like voicing just now. "This places moves around, but you can find it here for a few weeks before they pack up, if you want to come back."

She darts through a curtain of foliage, and I follow. We're still a good thirty meters from the top of this tree, which _could_ mean we haven't hit the Windy layer yet--

\--but I'm nowhere near that lucky. The bar, such as it is, consists of a whole maze of curving branches, and at least a third of the population of this place are Ofanim using those branches as perches for spinning around. Relievers zip around with bottles and mugs, leaving trails of sparks in their wake.

Three separate members of the waitstaff try to lift my phone on the way to the branch Riccarda's picked for us. Nothing too aggressive, especially from crackling little kids like these; all I have to do is not give them an easy shot at the pocket, and they keep moving. But it makes me twitchy. While I have no desire to smack around relievers, I don't like the combination of their inclination toward larceny and the deity-enforced pacifism around here. It skews everything in favor of the kind of people who enjoy inflicting non-violent trouble on others. No wonder Judges end up so grouchy.

"The surprise option's more fun, because if the whole point is to try _new_ beer, why pick anything you recognize?" Riccarda arranges herself over the branch to provide a hanging loop. One set of wings spreads out behind it. "Make yourself comfortable."

Hell. Even if I am stuck in a Windy bar with no good way out, I'm not going to say no to that. And Riccarda's grin is downright wicked when I sit down on the perch she's made for me. "Tell me you're a hops sort of girl," I say.

"No such luck, Tradeboy. I can appreciate them, but I find lambics more exciting than another IPA. Speaking of which!" She turns that grin on a fuzzy reliever who's been trying to get a line on my pocket for the last thirty seconds. "Surprise us, would you? I've got a tab."

I hook a foot up onto Riccarda's scales, and slouch back inside the loop. She ought to be more intimidating than I find her; she must have three Forces on me, if not more, even aside from being a distincted Warrior. _Sean_ can be intimidating at times, though I'd never admit it to him. And she...isn't.

There is an excellent chance she shot my partner. Ex-partner. And she'd do it again in a heartbeat. A slight change in circumstance, and she would've put a bullet in me while I was a demon, with exactly as many regrets.

I shift sideways, and glare off a Mercurian who does not look apologetic in the slightest about slipping a hand inside my pocket. "You spend a lot of time with the Wind?"

"They're locals, they know how to throw a party, and just look at all those Wheels." Riccarda hangs her head near mine, tail-tip drifting back and forth like a metronome. (Between the turning of the rings that are me, so that we're in sync and not colliding. Layers of reality, here.) "No one does short-notice small group tactics better."

They're a whole organization of irresponsible thieves who don't have enough integrity to call themselves by that name. And they can't keep their hands off other people's things. They are also, according to the employee guides I've been reading, the nearest thing Trade has to an ally it's biased in favor of. _Why_ , no one's explained to my satisfaction yet, but it's upper level politics. I don't have to like it. Just follow the party line. (No one's truly neutral, and maybe that's as good a reason as any. Gotta admit a bias somewhere, so here we go, aligned with a bunch of cheap hooligans who don't even give us as much credit in return. But I guess it's very much the Wind's style, to take without giving back.) So I reach out to accept the beer that's just been delivered, and ask, "Who supplies this place?"

Riccarda is not only happy to tell me, she has _opinions_ on beer distribution in Heaven. This turns into an explanation of War's drinking culture, which has all sorts of complicated overlapping subcultures, not even taking into account the isolationist traditionalists who don't drink with anyone who wasn't around before the Fall. And even they have some breakaway groups that are reintegrating, which is a current object of minor local controversy, for definitions of "current" that seem to mean the last few centuries.

Contemplating the time scale of some Words is nearly enough to break my mind, and a useful distraction from all the spinning rings of fire and shifty angels in this place.

And she was right. The beer is good, varied, and fast to arrive. One type after another, and I can feel my judgment slipping away.

Not that I have the best of judgment around friendly Seraphim anyway. Or Balseraphs who are willing to fake friendly while they're looking in my direction. Or--let's not go down the list right now. I'm trying to do this angel thing, and it's probably going to work better if I stop contemplating demons I've had interesting relationships with. All of which ended badly, one way or another, but some less badly than others.

I snag an Elohite's wrist, and get my phone back. Again. I could put it in a different pocket, but they'd just take that as a challenge around here. The Power smiles at me, and looks far more like Unathi than I would like. (Things I still don't want to think about: the list.) All of that Choir does, or maybe that Habbalite looked like them, I don't know. One way or another.

"It's a bad place to bring small objects," Riccarda says, and waves the Elohite away with one wing. "Should I have warned you?"

"I suppose that depends on what you wanted to get out of the experience," I say. "What happens if one of them actually manages to run off with my phone?"

"You'd probably get it back eventually." Riccarda shrugs, the ripple passing all along her length so that my seating wobbles beneath me. "They're great for security testing, aren't they?"

"Yeah. It's almost like being back home." This language has all sorts of words that mean _home_ in different ways, and it is ruthless: it won't let me use the wrong one. "Which beer is this?"

Riccarda flicks a tongue into my glass. "Something wheat from the Artful Dodger. You'd think it would be a Creation beer, with a name like that, but it's someone over in Flowers. Credit where it's due, those people know how to ferment vegetable matter."

"It's nice to know that every Word in Heaven does something useful," I say, and the Seraph snickers. I have nothing against Flowers; they've done me more good turns than I properly deserved.

"It's one thing in Heaven, and another down on the corporeal, though God knows when an Archangel gets it in their head to--" Riccarda pauses, triple-blinking down at the Elohite who's come back around to offer her a note. "Trouble, buddy?"

"We're always in trouble," the Elohite says, calm in that sort of pleasant customer service way that doesn't mean anything. "Whether we're making it or solving it."

Riccarda flips open the note (a flash of her vessel there, tall and dark with a wicked smile) and makes a thoughtful kind of noise. "My place or yours, hot stuff?"

That's to me. "My place is currently full of Trade Seraph, but if you'd like to stop by and say hello--"

"Like I don't get enough Seraphim at home," Riccarda says, uncoiling with a roll to drop me back to my feet on a wide branch below us. "My place is closer. Can you still walk in a straight line?"

"...maybe."

"Good enough!" She leans against me, to straighten my wobble as I make my way down that branch to where--oh, well, we can just walk through the leaves and off the edge. Like it matters if we fall. Gravity's as polite as the relievers around here, and even easier to ignore if it's not convenient right that minute.

And we're going pretty damn fast by the time we hit the ground. Riccarda's transition is as smooth as waterfall to river, and I hit my feet like I meant it that way.

I am not, however, sober enough to walk in a particularly graceful line afterward. Even if it's mostly straight.

"What kind of home was that place like?" Riccarda asks. It's never a trick question from her; I'm not sure when I'll get used to that.

"Stygia. Which wasn't exactly home, just a place I stopped by now and again." I take my phone out and check where we are. (In the Groves. Thanks, phone.) "The wind never stops and you can't trust anyone. It's a bad place to try to own anything."

"I've known people to go Theft to Wind," Riccarda says. "Not your style?"

"If I wanted to keep stealing things, and never stop moving, and never own a damn thing for more than a few days, I could've stayed a Calabite."

"Trade as the opposite. That or Judgment, if you're going as far from Theft as possible." She grins with fangs. "Or War. No running away from fights with us."

"Do many people go from War to the War?"

This is exactly the sort of question I shouldn't ask. But she says, "More than we'd like. _Any_ is more than we'd like, so that wasn't very informative, was it? But it's got that easy path downhill, for people who want to Fall."

"Do you think people Fall when they don't want to?"

"I think 'want' isn't as easy a thing for people to figure out as we might think." Riccarda nudges me to the side. "Left side of this tree, and, here we go. It's hard to say what makes a person Fall when every report is biased by nature, right? Whole lot of theories, plenty of trends, but in the end every Fall is between that angel and God."

"I don't think it can be. I didn't come here because of God, and if I left, it wouldn't be about them either." The tent doesn't seem like it ought to be big enough to hold the two of us, but since when has Heaven cared about inside and outside measurements matching? I sit down on furs and hides; presumably angels get these from the same places as they get their steaks. "God's the big concept, but Heaven and Archangels and the people here, that's what we actually deal with. Or leave. If God can fuck up a demon in Hell whenever they feel like it, it's not like Falling takes a person away from them. Not like swapping sides takes you away from the people who show up in person."

There's a Seraph of War--a Vassal of War, no less--with her head in my lap. "Why didn't you just tell me you didn't like sitting in a bar with a bunch of Windies?"

It's not quite a non sequitur. Because everything comes back to the people we want to be near, doesn't it? "I was trying to be--the sort of person I'm supposed to be. Angelic."

"You really should sit in on one of the long-standing arguments we have," Riccarda says, draping wings over my shoulders, her head turned about so that she can blink lazily up at me. "We can be terrible and impolite, and _no one_ argues the way War argues with itself. A whole culture of angels who can't bear to back down! You don't like something, you don't like it. You can chew over why you do or don't, or if you should or shouldn't, when it's a good idea for your job, but when you're out having a few beers--"

"That was more than a few."

"--out having _several_ beers with a charming Seraph of your recent acquaintance, Tradeboy, just say, fuck, I don't do Windy bars. And I can decide if I find that cute or a dealbreaker."

"Is it?"

"A dealbreaker?" Her tongue flicks across my neck. "Not in the _slightest_. Plenty of fish in the sea, plenty of bars in the Groves. Take me to a Flowers rave some day and watch me try to be polite to the host."

"You could come have coffee with me and Penny. And talk spreadsheets."

Her brow arches, and she lifts her head above me. "Spreadsheets? You're into that?"

"...only when Penny's filling them out, really."

"Never was into Seraphim, personally," Riccarda says, "but I'm not going to argue _against_ their appeal. Do you want to keep that vessel look up, or strip down for some more fun?"

"I don't know what to _do_ with all these rings."

"There's only three," Riccarda says. She slips her head back down, and past my shoulder. Through the center of all three, a loose band around the edge. "I'm sure we can figure the details out."

We can. I would blame this on Balseraphs, but Seraphim are just as convincing in their own way.


	11. In Which Heavenly Law Is Surprisingly Imprecise Around The Edges

It's a good thing Heaven doesn't believe in hangovers, because I'm only about a half hour sober when my phone pings me about that appointment with the Sword. Fortunately, that's half an hour sober and two hours out of the Groves; it's surprisingly easy to tidy up in Penny's office, despite the lack of a shower, because vessel projection is just...projection. There's nothing _there_ to muss. And if there's a way for my celestial form to get any messier, I haven't figured it out yet. Rings are rings are rings, apparently, and it's not like you need to comb flames.

"I should've done more research on the legal system," I tell Penny. "Instead of going out drinking."

"The Sword doesn't appreciate clever contractual analysis," he says. (If he were someone else, he would adjust my collar, or ruffle my hair. He's none of those people.) "Explain what you mean honestly, and expect them to give you a fair chance in return."

"It's Heaven. 'Honestly' is the only adverb I get."

"There are degrees." He's brought up his own vessel image for this, and lays a hand on my shoulder. "Clever as serpents, harmless as doves. We deal fair."

"Always," I say. Which is--not exactly marked for _it has been that way_ so much as _I'll try to make it true._ The truth lies in a very fuzzy area when talking about the future. It's not true or false until you get there.

I leave through the airy hallway for once, because it feels more appropriate for doing business. And this is _business_. Personal, sure, but I'm not making a case based on those aspects. Motivation versus methods.

Elohim are the only people where those two always map to each other. It's a wonder anyone can stand to be one. (Though it must feel as natural from the inside as making the world fracture does for a Calabite.) What Luna sees in one, I just don't get. Allies, sure. Business partners. Elohim are cold-hearted bastards, and anyone can find that useful once in a while. But friends? How does that even _work_?

She's not native to Heaven, but she's a lot closer to it than I am. Fewer bad habits to unlearn, less propaganda to disprove. She can make friends like a real angel. I--can make the sort of friends I could've made when I was a demon. The sort of demon who kept making friends with angels, which was, okay, maybe something of a _hint_ , in retrospect, that I wasn't hanging out in the right places. Proper angels know how to be friends with chilly sleek Powers who will sacrifice you in an instant for the greater good.

The sunlight pours down outside like ever. I should be glad for people like Sean; they keep Heaven from feeling relentlessly, implausibly cheerful. The angels, the blessed souls, the relievers, there's not enough of them who don't want to be here for me to even spot them in the crowds.

I cross above a cobbled avenue on a bridge no wider than the one I stood on with Henry, and wonder how long it's been since anyone died in Heaven. You couldn't go ten seconds without resetting that counter, in Hell. Around here--I suppose it depends on how often Judgment executes people. They probably have statistics. I don't want to look those up.

A man could drown in the information available here. Or walk into Destiny's Library and never walk out again. Not in the ominous _and he was never seen again_ sense that Fate's Archives have, but just...distracted. Forever. You could keep piling more information into your head, stories and data and analyses, and never catch up with the generation of more.

There is no such thing as knowing enough to be sure you made the right choice. We're all working on incomplete data, here. Even the Seraphim.

The Sword doesn't go for obfuscation; at times you'd think Laurence was the Seraph, and Michael the Malakite, by their preferred approach to other Words, or just the parts of Heaven they inhabit. My phone gives me an efficient route to my appointment with the location specified down to the meter. I flip the phone and catch it as I walk, with an eye out for clouds of Windy relievers who might swoop in at its apex. But the city's population is Judgment, Sword, and a high percentage of blessed souls. (Blessed works better as a definition in angelic than in English. It doesn't sound so much like something another person did to them, there.) Lightning at one edge, Destiny at another... There's a very different feel to this city than to Commerce Park. It's not exactly more formal, or quieter, or more serious. Just. Different.

It feels less like a place I belong.

I suppose I should appreciate that my newest attempt at home does feel like a place I could belong, even if mostly in contrast to other parts of Heaven.

For what it's worth, my meeting takes place in a building that is neither spire-infested nor built on monastic templates. The tower spirals up like some of those Earth-impossible tent spurs back home, with a ramp at its center and all the rooms hanging off its edges in strings and clusters. Each room is a flattened sphere, like soap bubbles in a strong wind. Or like prayer beads; the Sword would prefer that metaphor. (They must do metaphors. A sharp chunk of steel doesn't make for a Superior-level Word without a lot of secondary meaning attached.) Prayer beads and prayer wheels, and I'm sure some of the people climbing that immense ramp are doing it as a religious act. It can't be the fastest way to get anywhere at all, even another point on the ramp.

I take the direct route. Couldn't hurt to look a bit more traditional in the Ofanite way, if anyone who reports back to authoritarian types is watching, and even I don't have the patience to take the ramp just to prove some kind of point about being able to. (People keep talking about Ofanite motion like it's all about speed. That's fucking simplistic, is what that is. Were Ofanim worse at being themselves before the internal combustion engine came along?) My destination's about forty layers up--some of these clusters span more than one pass of the ramp, so it's tricky to count--in a set of gray bubbles. Steel gray, if I had to put a name to it.

There are far more Malakim around here than I am comfortable with.

I pocket my phone before someone asks why an Ofanite has this much trouble finding places, and follow the last few steps of the map to the place where one of the clusters attaches to the ramp. The nearest side of a room-bubble is only a faint gray mist, as if someone moved the opaque slider down several notches. Inside appears to be a reception area almost exactly like you could find in Trade, or in any number of cities on the corporeal, and when I step through the wall, this impression doesn't change in the slightest.

The floor's nicer, though. I'll give them that. It's a complex mosaic worked in all sorts of interesting stone, some of which I've only seen in museums. (Well. One museum. We were robbing it at the time. Never mind.) I am walking across a scene wherein a saint does...something involving a bag full of hands? I'm not well-versed on the details of Catholic mythology, or whatever the Heavenly rendition of it is. Possibly this is a famous story around here and completely unknown on Earth. Bag of severed hands. How very Sword.

A human soul waits behind the reception desk, a reliever perched on each shoulder. They're silent, wide-eyed little things, not more than four Forces each. She wears the latest glasses-integrated monitor from Lightning, and pulls up a quick professional smile for me. "Appointment or petition?"

"Appointment. I'm supposed to meet up with Vaclav in about five minutes." Three minutes, give or take ten seconds. "The name's Leo."

"He's ready for you. Right back there, to the next open door." She points to the wall behind her desk, which grays out into translucence.

I can admire the efficiency. I walk out of the room into the center of the bead cluster, and all I have to do is look for another grayed wall, then step a few meters up to climb through it. Fly through it? Oh, never mind the verb. It's as graceful (or not) as walking, around here, even if I'm going up instead of forward.

Of course this room is larger on the inside than the outside. I should expect that by now. (We don't go for much of that in Trade; it's an option, of course, but the culture leans more towards a _what you see is what you get_ approach to architecture.) A Mercurian sits cross-legged in the center of the room, while three quarters of the walls are studded with bins of scrolls. I think I'd prefer the techy glasses, if we have to start consulting the details of this situation.

He inclines his head to me, and doesn't ask me to sit. (Of course not. Ofanim hate sitting still, don't we?) And because he's a Mercurian, we have to run through a few rounds of Heaven-standard pleasantries and formalities before we can get down to business. We both know what we're here to talk about.

_Who_ we're here to talk about. I do idle circuits of the room until we get down to business proper.

"To begin with," Vaclav says, a good five minutes of conversation in, "Word transfer isn't an option. She's already had that discussion with me, the Abbess, and several other appropriate parties. If Nikostratos wanted to swear to another Archangel, as a means of resolving her difficulties with the principles of the Sword, she could have done so already."

"Assuming she wanted an Archangel you'd approve of."

"As the Archangel Eli hasn't been seen in Heaven in decades," Vaclav says dryly, "her choices of inappropriate Archangels are few. Unless you think she's been secretly longing to join Flowers all this time?"

I find that I dislike this Mercurian much less once we're talking about relevant things.

"I know she doesn't want to leave the Sword. I asked." I sit down across from him, settling into the same cross-legged pose he's using. "If she wanted a transfer, she could apply for it herself. What I'm trying to do is sponsor her for parole."

"So I was told." Vaclav folds his hands together in his lap. "I apologize for taking so long to meet with you, but with a request like that, research seemed in order. Could you explain how you see this working out? Ideally."

Give me a chance to write up a proposal, and I could make this request sing. But after a certain point the Sword doesn't _like_ paperwork. (This, despite all the scrolls stuffed into the walls of this office.) They're not Judgment, and they have that Malakite focus on personal honor. Which is why I'm here in person to explain, in my own words, in front of someone who can look at what I really feel about the person I'm arguing for.

You'd think Seraphim would be the most terrifying people to explain yourself to. Or Elohim. But Mercurians can be just as sneaky and ruthless as any of the other Choirs, and with a resonance to back that up.

"Ideally," I say, and then I stop and try the sentence otherwise, because the ideal isn't possible. I'm not sure _ideal_ even exists; what I would like most wouldn't make Nik happy, what she wants most isn't possible in this world as it stands, and what we're actually looking for is some sort of compromise that's better than the status quo. "What I'm suggesting is parole for Nikostratos, so that she can return to the corporeal under supervision. Trade's sending me back downstairs as soon as we get some prep work sorted out, but they insist I go with backup, and I'm not about to take a Cherub. I've worked with Nikostratos before; I trust her to watch my back. And I'm pretty sure she's gotten as much personal development as she's going to out of a life of quiet contemplation, by now."

"Who's supervision would she be under?" Vaclav asks.

"Mine."

The Mercurian clears his throat delicately. "While I hate to point out the obvious, you've been an angel for somewhat less than a month."

"I was under the impression the whole angel/demon thing was more of a binary than a spectrum. Is there some sort of pre-angelic waiting period I should be aware of?"

...okay, that could have been said more politely. Maybe I should've taken Luna up on her offer to do some of this talking for me. She doesn't have as much negotiation experience as I do, but she has a lot more experience with negotiating with people in good faith. With people who aren't out to get her, even.

"Your angelic status isn't in question," Vaclav says, "but your experience as a, mm, supervisor of angels may be."

"Oh, I've done _that_ before," I say, and try to keep my smile on the confident side of the line, without letting it slide straight over into Valefor. "I never had trouble working with Nik back when I first knew her. She's got great initiative and follows instructions well. Slight tendency towards precipitious violence, but nothing unreasonable there. I can't blame an angel of the Sword for stabbing a Balseraph of the War, even if I _was_ talking things out at the time."

Vaclav looks a touch nonplussed at this, but he recovers fast. "If you'll excuse the question, weren't you a demon at the time?"

"Well, yes."

"And you'd like us to consider you an appropriate supervisor for Nikostratos based on that experience."

"Sure." I lean back on my hands, all bright angelic cheer. "I made sure she didn't pick up too much dissonance, and sent her to work it off when she got any. When I realized the rate was picking up, I sent her back home. Even then I knew my limitations as a supervisor." I tilt my head to the side. "Do you think I would do a _worse_ job now that I'm an angel?"

Definitely nonplussed. It's probably a good thing I'm not dealing with an Elohite, here. "Your good intentions aren't in doubt," Vaclav says. "According to the Mercurian of Trade who's been managing your cultural integration, you've been cleared for corporeal duties. She sent along a letter of recommendation."

Considerate of her, and I hadn't thought to ask. Maybe I should've asked Penny for one too; he may be biased, but Seraphim seem to get the final word on a lot of arguments around here. "So everything seems in order."

"On your side, yes." So he's conceded the point, but not agreed to my terms yet. Fair enough. "However, Nikostratos hasn't been approved for corporeal duties. If I may be frank, she doesn't seem likely to any time soon."

"I don't see how she could," I say, "if you have her doing quiet contemplation 24/7 with limited visiting hours. There's no scope to show she's improved if she's not being given any challenges."

"Her previous work on the corporeal proved far too challenging for her. Thus the period of being Outcast, and associating with inappropriate influences."

"Okay, so Ferro wasn't the best influence in the world," I say, with an airy wave, "but since I pulled her out of the very slow downward spiral she was engaged in, taught her a few new skills, and then sent her back home, I can't have been _that_ inappropriate an influence. If she's going to be under close supervision and helping the cause of Heaven, what does the Sword have to lose if she goes back to the corporeal to get some work done? I'm not about to let her go Outcast _again_. Imagine what that would look like on my yearly evaluations."

Trade probably has yearly evaluations. I haven't asked, but it seems like our style.

"She lost her vessel and Role when she first defied direct orders." Vaclav manages to sound sympathetic and disapproving all at once, which is a neat trick. "Replacing those costs us time, Essence, and personnel focus."

"She could go back to the corporeal without either. Most Kyriotates don't have that."

"Most Kyriotates," Vaclav says, "are not Servitors of the Sword. Taking on the life of a human warrior who died needlessly is part of what they are; it's not just some resource we attach to them for their convenience. If Nikostratos means to return to the corporeal as a Kyriotate of the Sword, she has to be worthy of that honor again."

"I believe she is. And she has no way of showing you that's true if you keep her here. She can't _learn_ anything inside that abby that she hasn't picked up by now, after years of--whatever people do in there."

"Pray," Vaclav says.

"Well, you know what they say. Pray to God, and pack ammunition. She's got the first part nailed." But arguing about that isn't going to get me anywhere. "The only way you can know for sure if she deserves another vessel and Role is by letting her use them, and seeing how it goes. So let's talk about the matter of resources. I'm willing to put up the Essence equivalent to cover that part."

"Out of what funds?" Vaclav asks, bemused all over again. "You only just arrived."

"I'll take out a loan. My promises are collateral enough, in Trade."

"So that she can pay you back later?"

That's the first time he's thrown me off balance in all this. "Of course not. She's my _friend_ , and she's saved my life a half dozen times over." And I owe her for turning her over to Judgment, no matter how much it was for her own good, or however else I attempt to justify what I did. That part is none of this angel's business. "Besides, if she could buy her own attunement back, I imagine she would have by now."

"You're offering yourself as the surety for her behavior," Vaclav says. "That's worth more than any raw quantifiable funds, Essence or otherwise. Are you sure you want to follow through with this request? Because if your request is granted--and that's not for me to decide, merely recommend--and Nikostratos starts taking on dissonance again, you will have a much larger problem than bad credit."

"Oh, let's not wander into the realm of the vague and ominous. I'm guessing what you mean is that if this setup goes bad, I get to explain why to her Superior."

"That," says the Mercurian, "would be it."

I try to picture myself standing in front of Laurence, Archangel of the Sword, Commander of the Heavenly Host, protege of the bloody-handed butcher of the Marches. Explaining that Nikostratos has picked up more dissonance than can be justified, and it's entirely my fault.

I fail. It's such a terrifying concept that I can't imagine it properly. It's a distant hypothetical that I can't sincerely believe in, like the final battle between Heaven and Hell, or Baal deciding to apologize to Michael and ask to come back home again. (Or, ha, the reverse.) And I have not made it this far by taking the safest option every time.

The safest option would still have me back with Zhune, doing--whatever he wanted to do this week. And probably spending a lot of time drunk, trying to forget what he did to Penny. No. I'm not running with safest.

"Makes sense. I'd probably have to go explain to my own Archangel why I made an investment that bad shortly afterward." I can't lie, but I can damn well project more confidence than I feel, with no Elohim at hand to tell otherwise. "As long as we're being explicit, does this mean you'll put the recommendation in?"

"I'll send your proposal up the ladder. You'll receive a response of some sort within a month." Vaclav presses his fingers together, watching me with an expression I can't quite identify. "That response may well be that your proposal is still being considered, and to wait another month for more information. We're always busy."

"All the more reason to get one of your people out of idle and back into drive."

"What I mean," he says, "is that if you're intent on returning to your duty on the corporeal, you shouldn't wait on this. Find a Cherub in Trade, if that's your other option, even if only on a temporary basis. The work doesn't wait for the perfect solution."

"I'm sure it doesn't."

"You're that set on having Nikostratos with you?"

I would sooner cut off an arm than let someone attune to me again. One of the many things it's not polite to say to strangers in the middle of a business meeting. "I'm staying optimistic, right up until I get a solid no."

He doesn't wish me luck during the obligatory parting formalties, but he conveys a sympathy for what I'm trying to do that might even be sincere. Or it might just be the Mercurian thing. People who like everyone might as well like no one, for all the difference it makes. But at least they're pleasant about it.

"I don't want pleasant," I tell Penny, back in the office. "I want progress." I spin the chair around, my chin hooked over my arms on its back. "Is this an Ofanite thing? Not having any damn patience anymore?"

Penny lets his wings flutter half open. "Were you exceptionally patient as a Calabite?"

"...point." I take out my phone, and toss it in the air. Catch, check my email, turn it off. I can almost use the tech without thinking about it by now. "Do you think I should've been more thoroughly honest? Most of Nik's dissonance, after I met her, came from helping me out. She earned it honestly. Least I can do is pay off the consequences for her."

"I don't know that the Sword would consider the defense of a demon extenuating circumstances," Penny says. A little pained, because that's as close as he means to get to telling me _No, keep quiet about the details._ "Besides, you're hardly able to speak in detail about the properly extenuating details."

Because he was the one who set up all those contracts, to varying degrees of formality, that have me sworn not to talk about working for War. Our dirty little secret. Not that dirty, honestly; I did good work for them, and nothing too messy. Murder-free, plus or minus a little violence. Nothing I'd be embarrassed to admit if they said it was fine to chat about again.

Which they have not. And that means everything Nik did for Heaven while she was Outcast, through working for me who was working for Sean, all the way through that strange chain of command leading up to the Archangel Michael, doesn't count one gram on her behalf.

On the other hand, this means that the part where she helped me blackmail Sean doesn't count against her, either. It almost evens out. And who ever said Heaven was _fair_? Even Trade's not fair. Fair wouldn't have me sitting here now, with six Seraphic eyes waiting for me to respond.

"You're the one with all the patience," I say, and leave the chair. "Do you think I can catch that orientation meeting at the tower? I know it's going to be all relievers and week-old kids, but I have boxes to tick off on the CorpReady app."

Penny checks the time on his phone. "You'll have to run," he says.

So I do. And it _is_ all relievers, plus two brand new angels, sitting in circles around the Kyriotate explaining Word policy to us. But that's one step closer to getting back to the real work.

Back to the real world, where arguments have teeth. All these wide-eyed _children_ have no idea what they're signing up for. But I do. And I'm going back there as soon as I can.

I will need someone to watch my back.


	12. In Which There Are Things On Sticks

The Malakite has slung an arm over my shoulders. "I just wanted you to know," she says, earnest in that way people get when they're not quite drunk but in spitting distance of it, "that I'm sorry I yelled at Peniel that one time when you were at Tess's place. You gotta learn to trust the judgment of Seraphim, right? Especially ones who have done this sort of thing before! And I was all 'Noooo, she's a demon,' and he was all, 'Seriously, I am making a long-term investment here, please let go of my collar,' and then I was all--"

"Maybe," I say, "you should tell him that instead of me?"

"That's a _great_ idea," says the Malakite, and claps me on the back before she stalks off to do exactly that.

Penny is framed elegantly by a white archway. Everything in this place is elegant, from the ivy-hung walls to the reflecting pool that lies in the center of the courtyard. White marble, green plants, blue water and blue tiles. I feel like I've stepped into a party of a higher class than my own.

Except it is, to an extent, my party. There are maybe thirty people here, not counting the relievers handling canape and drink delivery, and every one of them is a friend of Penny's invited to meet. Well. Me. I have been greeted by most of the Choirs I'm aware of, and several blessed souls. (Of course Penny would make friends with humans. He's the sort of Seraph who can, and we do work for a Mercurian.) I have then been given as much space as I seem to want, because all of these people are so very happy I'm here, and none of them have any reason to pressure me towards...anything.

I'm in the right place. Their friend was right all along, no matter what side they argued before. (And there sure were a lot of arguments, to hear these people talk.) What would they pressure me into? I could sit in a corner with a drink for hours if I wanted to.

Oddly enough, I don't want to. I've dealt with a lot of angels for business reasons by now, or spent time with a few people I knew, but this is the first time I've really seen a whole group of angels just be social at each other.

"It's always a risk-benefit analysis," Tess says to a lynx-Cherub with black tufted ears, who is nibbling on a stick of tiny sweet rice balls. "But what in life isn't? You can't just make a solid rule--this much risk, this much benefit, otherwise it's a no go--and stick to it, or you'll drown in corner cases. It's like with blackjack--" She pauses to wave her cup at me as I pass. "They're putting out cocoa in the espresso bar now, Leo."

"Like I said, it's really not a problem." And the last thing I want is some poor child of an angel mortified to discover he's set up all the drinks with coffee when the guest of honor doesn't drink it, though we're past that point now, and it's a lot less awkward than it would be in some places. The kid's going to fledge Malakite if he takes beverage delivery this seriously.

"And it wasn't a problem for them to fix, either," Tess says. She turns away to continue her conversation with the Cherub, who has a big toothy smile for me, and no more than that. They're being considerate. Or at least Tess is, and the Cherub's following her lead, because the Elohite _would_ know how to do emotional management.

I still feel a little weird for having mistaken Tess for a Cherub for this long. When I see her celestial form, I can't see how I'd confuse her for one. I suppose there wouldn't be as much of a point in vessels if it were easy to spot who was wearing them.

A pair of relievers swoop down with a plate of tiny ices on sticks. I pop one in my mouth, and wave them along. The stick is _also_ edible, and I don't even know what it's made of. Something cinnamony and sharp that melts in my mouth and not, proverbially, in my hand. A large Kyriotate--no, two of them flow apart to let me pass, with a smile from one side and waggle of fingers from the other. "It's been so good to see Eder again," the waggling one says, while another mouth keeps up the conversation they were having about...yarn? Knitting. Well, knitting, then. Takes all kinds to make up a party.

I stop at the drinks bar, if only to assure the reliever in charge of it that I am _fine_ with whatever he wants to serve. The espresso machine never stops, here, and two thirds of those shots are going out mixed with alcohol. There's no other party like a Trade party, because at the Trade party they mix their uppers and their downers, and both are pretty concentrated.

There's a keg of a fine Flowers-made IPA beer especially for me. And if I wanted to get drunk, I'd be having nothing but. However, I _don't_ want to get smashed this early on--at least not before all the Malakim are--so I walk away from the bar with the most complicated cup of hot chocolate I have ever seen. And something else on a stick. Not everyone here has fingers, which makes me wonder about the stick as default delivery method for the snacks, but on-a-stick appears to be the preferred method. So be it. I'm not a caterer to argue with the professionals.

Even if they are children.

Well, children by angelic standards. At eight Forces for the bartender, and somewhere in the six to seven range for everyone carrying trays, these _children_ are already larger than the majority of humanity at its finest. (Largest? Whatever you want to call the Force measure of a human. Essence-capacity-est, by Impudite standards.) On average, they're smarter, faster, and a lot better at paying attention to people than human adults. Perfectly capable of handling minor logistics for a small, private party.

No wonder humans in the know find angels condescending. Even Mercurians are hard-pressed not to be a little so towards people they could run circles around before growing any feathers.

"Disingenuous is what I call." A Mercurian in leather pants (god, I hope that's cow leather and nothing derived from sentient creatures, I have heard stories) is all tattoos, piercings, and a lot of fierce intensity at the other Mercurian standing across from her. Maybe the coffee isn't the best idea. "You can't seriously advocate for privacy laws on that scale when we can pick up more information just by looking at someone."

"It's entirely different when an angel does it," says the second Mercurian. (She's wearing an outfit I could see Zabina in; if she didn't come straight from office to party, well, she's dressed like she did.) "That's not the same as the systematic erosion of privacy--"

"Bullshit. 'We're the good guys, so we can do it' doesn't _count_. Either privacy matters, or it doesn't. We don't have some sort of free pass because we work for God." The Mercurian with all the piercings--which, for reasons I can't quite pinpoint, don't give her the slightest bit of a Habbalite look--beckons at me when I swing too close. "Right to privacy, what do you think?"

"All you people looking into my head and my past are kinda freaky as it is," I say. "Do you think we could get a movement going in Heaven for consent-based resonating?"

"Not _likely_ ," she says, while the other Mercurian rolls her eyes. "It's all, hey, God gave us the _ability_ , that means we _should_. As if everything we can do we should be able to do."

"There's a great gap between knowing a person's past and abusing that knowledge," says Business Casual Mercurian. (To be fair, her jacket's pretty sweet. I could do some serious skulking in a jacket like that, though I'd go for a more masculine cut.) "Since planning is always limited by knowledge, and it's not like we couldn't find the same details in an inefficient prosaic way--"

"--which would still be a violation of privacy," says the other Mercurian. I give them a polite nod and move on.

A reliever swoops down with another tray. Espresso cups, but these are full of chocolate. "Unsweetened, with chili," she says, a tail twitching below her glittering wings. "Care to try one? They're best as a single shot. There's a weaker version for sipping."

I pick up a cup, and knock back a shot. "How much would it cost to have you bring me one of these every day?"

"Special events only," she says sweetly. "Keeps them, you know, special. But I can keep delivering them to you all through the party. Want a shot of something stiff in one?"

"Ask me again in half an hour." I snag a second cup. "What do you think of privacy rights?"

"Truth is truth," she says, with shrug that's more a ripple than shoulder action. I expect she's turning Cherub, but I wouldn't be surprised to see her fledge Seraph, either. Hard to tell at this stage. "It's not something to worry about much here in Heaven, is it? People with big secrets to keep do a good job of keeping them."

Unless those secrets are written across their histories, for anyone with the right resonance to pick out. "More often than not," I say, and move on.

An Ofanite breezes past me. They're made of rings inside rings, concentric circles that pack down to whirling central disc. "Looking good," they say, on the approach, and as they roll away, "Let's talk cars some time."

I can only assume they have hidden depths not apparent on first meeting. Penny's better at seeing potential in people than I am, though how one gets a long enough conversation with an Ofanite to notice said potential, I haven't figured out yet.

A blessed soul with a feathered hat bows when I pass, which is enough to make me stop. (Being an Ofanite is a good excuse for circulating through the crowd, instead of trying for long conversations with near-strangers.) "Zeferino, at your service."

"Leo," I say, though he already knows that, and I end up with a handshake while I'm trying to figure out if bowing would be more appropriate. His smile has crooked teeth; the souls of the blessed are perfected, but there are a lot of ways of looking at perfection. Not everyone cares about perfect dentistry. "I think Penny pointed you out just after the bar opened...?"

"Yes, I came with a Virtue, who was getting drunk, last I saw her. Has she worked up the courage to speak with you yet?"

"Oh yes."

"Good." He crosses his arms, leans back on the heels of his boots. In a party of angels, a human can wear clothing a century or three out of date and not look particularly misplaced. "Someone else ought to get drunk, to keep her company. I may be the one to throw myself on that grenade. However, she speaks for several of us, including some who haven't quite enough honor to make it explicit."

"I'm not about to hold some doubts on the matter against people," I say, hands in my pockets. There's no wing weight here to counterbalance my tendency to hunch my shoulders in when I have to talk about anything serious, but neither is there any true muscle memory to the projection of a vessel. So I make some damn effort to stand up straight. "I would have agreed with them, not long ago."

"You could tell them so," Zeferino says, "but it won't make them feel any better." He taps the side of his nose. "Maybe that would be a reason for telling them, right there."

"Maybe, if it seems like a good way to win an argument." This language makes me far more candid than I ought to be; I'll learn to control my conversation better one of these days. "How did you meet Penny? Was it here in Heaven?"

"Long ago and far away," the human says, with a grand wave of his hand, "when I still had the kind of body that ages attached to me. Between you and me? I don't miss it. They speak of the Pax Dei and the infinite beauty of Heaven, but I appreciate how few lice I encounter." His hand draws back in with a canape: several paper-thin layers of different colors, cut into a delicate spiral. He downs it with one bite. "I can't complain about the catering, either. No, I met Peniel, one of the Most Holy, as the straight-laced older brother of a guild girl I was trying to woo. I found him mysterious and unbearably arrogant at the time; I believe he found me boorish. But through a long series of grand adventures far too complicated to explain while we're standing about in a party, we came to have a somewhat better appreciation for each other."

I down another tiny cup of hot, bitter chocolate. It's easy to forget there are blessed souls who were dead, reawoken in Heaven, and settled into long-term careers here before my Forces were ever pulled together. (Either time.) Oh, it's easy to be condescending, but that doesn't mean it's always a good plan. "I don't suppose you've written them down in handy book form?"

"It would ruin my air of mystery," Zeferino says, "and I've taken quite some time building that up, but if you buy me a drink, I'll share a few anecdotes one of these days. You could also ask Peniel, but he doesn't tell the stories half so well as I do." He cuts another bow to me, and this time I can see it for the showmanship it is. (The man's lucky he never met an Impudite, who might be charmed by how well he does it.) "A pleasure to meet you, Leo; and now I mean to catch up on my friend's head start with the drinking."

I nibble my way through a whole series of tiny snacks, stick-impaled or otherwise, as I meander back and forth through the crowd on a very slow zig-zag to that archway where Penny still waits. The knitting conversation has expanded to a cluster of five people (six? four? hard to tell with Kyriotates) speaking with great passion about yarn brands and the practicality of importing them from one part of the world to another. An Elohite and Mercurian, fingers laced together, give me a solemn sort of greeting and make me wonder about Luna and Johannes.

It's really none of my business, but I still don't see how Elohim can be anyone's friends.

Penny's in conversation with another Seraph. She's burnished silver from head to tail's tip, as if Marc poured her out of liquid metal that hasn't cooled since. Her wings are almost invisible, folded against her sides; the same color as the rest of her, but a shift from snakeskin to packed feathers in texture. She turns her head toward me when I'm a meter away, and her eyes are all a gray so pale they're nearly transparent.

"Somehow," she says, "I thought you would be shorter." She dips her head fractionally my way. "Amaliel. Thank you for finally moving over to our side. We expect Penny will be able to focus on his work more effectively now."

"That would be the other vessel," Penny says, and while it's not the sort of thing I saw very often in Balseraphs, I would swear to God from the way he moves that he's embarrassed by what she's said. "Amaliel was my mentor when I was much younger--"

"Not so very much younger," she says. "You're not a thousand yet." She slips past me to drape herself over a perch at the end of the reflecting pond, and reflects in it more brightly than the sky shining through the vine-hung trellises above us. "What sort of work will you be picking up, now that you're here?"

There's no question in her mind that I'll be doing something useful. Of course I will. I didn't redeem so that I could lounge around in Penny's office looking fidgety.

"Security," I say. "And general troubleshooting." (The translation isn't precise, because angelic has a different word that also translates that way, and implies a lot more shooting--or at least stabbing--in how you deal with the trouble. The one I've picked has more zip and less blood to it. Reaction time. It's an Ofanite sort of word, but also a Mercurian one.) "Other duties as assigned, according to the last line of the job description, but I'm told that's standard."

"It is." Amaliel finally extends a wing, as a gesture towards Penny. Fond, and not concerned about anyone else noticing. "This is how accountants end up hip-deep in swamps, and fine young Malakim who wish to smite evil find themselves changing diapers."

"By and large," Penny says, "the accountants do accounting." He clears his throat. "Occasionally while in swamps."

"Does anyone ask Seraphim to change diapers?" I ask.

"Not while anyone else is available," Amaliel says, right over whatever Penny meant to say there. "Now what about this architectural interest I've heard you have?"

"More of a hobby these days." I grab another cup of cocoa. It's a good thing I'm not drinking caffeine or alcohol. "If low-income urban housing design were my heart's desire, I would ask for work in that area, but it's not."

A reliever zooms past, trailing sparks, and leaves me with a mug of beer. Now that's a kid who's going places. The Seraphim bracketing me have each acquired new espresso shots while I was distracted by the delivery, though Amaliel's already setting her empty cup down on a tray. 

Penny ruins the symmetry by slipping over to my side, head above mine and half his wings to my back. "There are always those other duties," he says. Which is true, and was some consolation during that email exchange with Orlaith about settling on job options.

My Archangel wants me to be happy. But he also wants me to be _useful_ , and I don't think I'd be particularly happy following hobbies at the expense of what the Word needs.

I think that's the _becoming an angel_ part of redemption, right there.

"So what is your heart's desire?" Amaliel stretches her head our way, a trio cluster of private conversation for this moment.

"How forthright of you," I say, and swig my beer.

"Coy is for Mercurians." Amaliel ripples at the look Penny gives her. "And possibly other Choirs, as they feel so led, or Elohim, as they think they ought to be led. There are good solid traditional answers. Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God..."

"My heart's desire," I say, "is to keep my promises, and trust my friends to do the same."

One more funny thing about Heaven. No one can doubt your sincerity when you're honest to God fucking sincere.

I shrug, and drink more beer. "There are plenty of other things I'd like, but I'd call that the primary set. What's yours?"

"Truth, equality, and a non-exploitative corporeal coffee trade. We all have our impractical long-term dreams." She smiles at me, serpentine and glossy. And yet nothing at all like a Balseraph. "Be kind when you can, Wheel. And when you can't, at least be honest."

The beer's too good to down fast, so I'm stuck with only one hand free to shove in a pocket. As such, I choose to slide an arm around Penny instead, while we watch Amaliel go. "Does she always do dramatic exits like that?"

"It wasn't that dramatic," Penny says, with the slightest huff in his voice. "Relatively speaking. And...yes. Often."

I lean against him, and watch people talk...economics. Knitting. Privacy rights. Vintage car repair. That Ofanite sweeps past to suggest we talk exactly that last one together some time, and keeps going before I can respond either way, which is one way to avoid anyone saying _no I'd rather not_.

I could get my hands inside a car engine these days without making things worse. It's such a strange idea.

"You have a lot of friends," I tell Penny.

"It seems like an ordinary number to me."

I don't say _you have more friends that I do_ because we both knew what I meant, anyway. These things take time. And opportunity, but Penny's providing me with some of those.

It would be interesting to talk to that Mercurian with strong opinions on privacy, again. Maybe not _comfortable_. But interesting.

"I like your friends," I say, because it seems like the kind of thing one ought to say another person who's awfully significant, and who has thrown an entire party for the purpose of introducing one to said friends. "Don't look now, but I think that Malakite's heading over here to apologize again."

"She's a good person," Penny says, "and she saved my life once."

"Demonic attack?" That's the only option that springs to mind, since cross-Word angelic murder is so strongly frowned on in Heaven. Even down on the corporeal.

"Traffic," Penny says, with wings slightly ruffled. I don't even have to look for that one, as I can feel it in the wings he's laid across my side. "The corporeal is a hazardous place."

And compared to Heaven, it actually is. The vast majority of the people will never try to so much as stab you, there's a vessel between you and true death, reality stays constant all the time, and it's still far more dangerous than where Penny calls home.

"It's a good thing for me," I say, before the Malakite can cross the last few meters to deliver more explanations with her apologies, "that you stop by there once in a while anyway."

"I thought so too." Penny sounds smug. That's fine. He's earned it.


	13. In Which I Demonstrate The Idealism Of Youth

I've never seen Vaina's office as it was duplicated in that peculiar part of the Marches. By the time I got to Heaven, he and Luna had already designed a new one and built enough of it to move into the place. And so it's less like half an office above water and half below, and a lot more like an aquarium two people work in. An aquarium done up in stained glass, with a sleek airlock for moving between air and water without flooding anything that shouldn't be flooded.

One of the many conveniences of my vessel not _actually_ being here is that I can drop by without so much as getting my socks wet. Luna leaves her good shoes at the door.

"What I don't understand," I say, sprawled across the pebbled floor, "is how coffee works underwater."

Vaina examines his cup. "Effectively," he suggests. His wings spread behind him in the water, tail twitching to correct his drift against the current. "Besides, a little saltwater in the coffee isn't such a bad thing." His brows raise as he looks down at me. A Cherub who's a monkey is a strange sort of thing--sitting almost in the uncanny valley position between Cherubim and Mercurians--but it does mean he gets a more expressive face than the ones who look like, say, elk. "It doesn't seem to bother you, either."

"Well." I hold a hand up, feeling the faint pressure of the current against my fingers. "I don't drink coffee."

"The water, though. Relievers pay it no attention, but most of the younger angels"--he means the ones that post-date the death of Oannes, I think, so ones only a few thousand years old--"find it unsettling, the first time in. Especially if they've had corporeal duty."

"Heaven's no stranger about its handling of physics than Hell is. Just--less aggressive." I draw in a deep breath, water through my mouth and into my lungs. "Besides, I'm already spending all my available attention for 'unsettling' on being a bunch of fiery rings."

"How are you finding that?"

"Unsettling?" I push up from the ground, and try to work out how to make myself comfortable in the water without letting it push me around. Luna explained the current and pump system once; it was a nice bit of engineering, but I don't recall the details as to why the fish need it. Psychological comfort, I guess. Nothing can really hurt them here--the Pax Dei is awfully broad in that respect--but I can respect a fish's need for a comforting and familiar environment. "I have a meeting to discuss vessel issues with the Boss tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to it. Despite everything else. I want to get back to a plane of existence where I have fingers without having to think about it."

Vaina wiggles his hands--paws?--at me. "Thank God for opposable thumbs, yes. I do sometimes appreciate that I'm not the type of Cherub with hooves. But there's nothing wrong with a set of rings."

"There's nothing wrong with it. It's just what it is."

"So it is. Though you might want to give some thought to how it suits you. Corporeal duty doesn't mean you should forget the celestial."

I let a hand float out to my side, and the school of silver-blue fish cuts around it gracefully. As easily as the water itself. "I don't intend to forget it. But the real work's down on the corporeal. I'm never going to be doing high-end management or counseling for the recently deceased. Or research, or any of the other jobs that you can do from Heaven. The corporeal's where I'm _supposed_ to be."

"It's not the only place you can be useful."

And I don't have to be a Mercurian (or an Elohite) to notice the emotional weight on that, however calm Vaina is. He's not upset, but he's damn well been reminded of something that used to upset him. Or still does, in a way that doesn't throw him into a tizzy. I don't think a lot throws Vaina into a tizzy; he's solid like bedrock.

"When are you going back to the corporeal?" I ask, and roll over. Chin on my hands, like it matters in water.

"When Luna gets a posting there," Vaina says. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you had corporeal work. You've done Marches work. And I have no doubt you can do things well here in the celestial, but I don't get the feeling it's where your talents are best suited."

"Most of my skills," Vaina says wearily, "are millennia out of date."

"Says the angel who installed three apps on my phone the first time I visited." I grin at him, but in the friendly way. "I need to get more comfortable on the celestial plane and in this body? Yeah, okay. Fair point. You need to remember that you're an angel with personal goals and talents beyond walking a step behind Luna, watching to see what might jump her."

"When they call the Cherubim the Guardians--"

"Yes, yes, it's in the name. Wheel here, all round and spinning." I twiddle my fingers over at him, and watch his wings mantle behind him. "But I do a lot more than roll, and you do more than guard. You are _worth_ more than your ability to watch out for other people. You get to have personal goals."

"My personal goals are always subordinate to the needs of Heaven, and of my attuned."

"Have you considered that your attuned might need you to model some healthy work-life balance? She's a Mercurian, and she needs people the way you need someone to protect. But so far as I can tell she comes home here after all her classes and dates and trips out with friends, while you..." I spin that hand around again. "Stay here. What do you want to do _beyond_ watch out for her? You had plans before you met her. Didn't you?"

Vaina blinks at me, and looks away. "Not particularly detailed ones."

That's not an answer that really invites further questioning. And maybe it's none of my business, at that. I don't know what losing an Archangel is like, much less losing one while you're in Trauma. It's not much like being transferred away by your Prince to some other; that's betrayal. Not loss.

"There's this Kyriotate I know," I say. "Another Trader, by the name of Eder. I met them in Shal-Mari, actually, not that long before I met you. Maybe you should meet up with them some time while Luna's out doing classes."

Vaina folds his hands in front of him, winged monkey in a saintly pose. "Why is that?"

"Because they've got a lot to say, to the right sort of person, about losing everyone you loved. And the wrong ways to deal with it. I figured maybe you could talk to them about what you did instead. Enough difference that it's not criticism, just..." I wave a hand. "Someone to talk to. Who's not doing the talking out of a sense of selfless duty."

"I'll think about it," Vaina says. He picks up a half-carved lump of wood with his tail, and a curved knife with his foot. "Do you feel that I talk to you out of a sense of duty?"

Give nosy personal advice, get nosy personal questions. A fair exchange. "I don't know. Maybe sometimes? I can't see what you're getting out of this that makes it worth your time." I do like watching him set the knife to wood. He always seems so confident about what it's going to become. "You promised to teach me those Songs before you knew who I was, and I said I'd take you up on it, so...here we both are, doing what we said we would."

"Maybe," Vaina says, "I like the company. Would you pass me that pick?"

I kick my way over to the toolbox, and find a pick that seems about the right size for what he's trying to do with the wood. "I'm not the person you thought you met, that first time. So it's not like it gives us any head start on getting along."

"Thank you." He turns the lump, which has begun to acquire eyes at one end, around in his paws. "You were a great deal more yourself during that conversation we had that you meant to be."

"I was _pretending_ to be an Ofanite. And now I just--am."

"Funny how that worked out," Vaina says.

I remember when I fell out of that place and Zhune caught me.

"Funny," I say. Funny like odd. Or maybe less odd than one might think. "Was I doing a good job of it?"

"The pretending? Yes, especially with the excuse of having redeemed. I never would have guessed, if not how matters ended." And Vaina says nothing at all about how I could have followed him back to Heaven, and saved Penny (and, I suppose, Luna and Vaina both, and maybe Eder and Nik) a good amount of worry.

I'm still not sure that I could have.

Well, opinions vary there. "I wish someone could've seen that last part inside. I mean, someone who didn't die in the process. And wasn't the god running the show. And who wouldn't have also died..." I wave a hand airily. (Waterily?) "I'm just saying, I did a damn good job in there."

"You survived," Vaina says, which is not a contradiction.

We float in companionable silence for a moment. Him with his carving, me watching the fishes.

"I think you'll do well on the corporeal," Vaina says. "And if you run into trouble, there are plenty of people you can call on for advice."

And even in Trade, they aren't going to charge me for it. Maybe consultation rates, at most, if I need a lot of time to get that advice.

I'm still thinking about this when Luna arrives, with a new scarf and bubbling enthusiasm about her class on social media. Mercurians and networking: apparently it's a whole thing.

The first time I met her, she was scared of talking to strangers, and with good reason. And still brave enough to reach out and take a chance when one of those strangers offered her one. Afraid of people and pain, and she got here a lot faster than I did, while I was being so damn clever and confident at everyone.

It's like Vaina said. Funny how it works out.


	14. In Which I Get An Update

I've spoken to Superiors in a few different places, over the course of my life. Valefor's half-real rooms behind the foyer of treasure. The burning plains of Sheol, where you learn to tune out all the screaming. Hotels, a few times, about as often as Theft Tethers. A hill that was once the site of some major battle. The break room of a tiny Revelation Tether. Never did meet Baal, which was probably for the best.

My current Superior (number four, but who's counting?) is wearing the sort of immaculate suit Penny would look good in while we walk beneath trees thirty meters high. Because he's an Archangel, he doesn't look like he's worn the wrong thing for this environment: he looks like he's setting the trend for what everyone ought to be wearing in the rainforest these days. Perk of the job, I guess.

"It's easy to get locked into one view of a Word," he tells me. He's set a leisurely pace, which is good for not tripping over roots or slipping across patches of wet leaves. "Humanity's always been the center of the war, and their perception of a Word does push it around. The wind in the sails, as it were."

I step over a fallen branch wider than I am. A jewel-toned frog blinks enormous eyes up my way, perfectly content in his water-filled leaf. I'm not a threat. Maybe even animals can tell that, in Heaven. "And people forget the water currents?"

"Exactly." He steps up onto a fallen trunk--nearly as tall as I am, and yet he makes it look effortless--and offers me a hand up. "Jordi sent me the Angel of Symbiotes around the time Greed was having its failure spiral. He doesn't always communicate the way some of the other Archangels do, but believe me, he can make himself perfectly clear. There are systems of exchange that existed long before humanity."

I am a trio of burning rings, locking and unlocking. Gravity is optional.

I take his hand, and climb up onto the trunk. Not so gracefully as I might like, but he has a grip like Penny's. It's practically a family resemblance.

"There's a job ready," Marc says, "for you to step into." This is a way of introduction to the topic I'm here to talk about; I've already read the paperwork. "The Tether's not new, but it's recently come under new management. Nahkal, Angel of Waterways, took it under their wing. They need someone to handle unusual trouble, and they asked for someone with a light touch."

We've been walking along the trunk, but I stop short at this. "I know it's been a while since I blew up anything bigger than a garage, but are you--" No, it's not really appropriate to ask an Archangel if he's _sure_. "A light touch compared to what?"

"Malakim," Marc says, his smile wry. "Or most Seraphim, for that matter. Cherubim, when their attuned are involved..."

Okay, so I'm getting the point. "I think I can handle that." I want to make that sound more confident, but it's hard to fake confidence in this language. Still. It seems...doable. Potentially. Easier than trying to cope with _the War_ , as jobs go.

"Which brings us to the details." We have reached the end of this trunk, and Marc climbs right down, with a look back to see how I'm doing as I follow. "We can attach the Role to either vessel, but those have recognition hazards. Would you rather try a new one entirely?"

I find I'm looking at my own hands. (Imaginary. But based on something real and solid.) "I'd--prefer some continuity. I keep losing vessels or getting the, uh, wrong kind, and this one actually feels like me. Even if I haven't used it very much."

"That's fair," Marc says. And he says it as casually as he's brought up anything else in this walk through the rainforest, but there's weight to that last word. "Will you take some minor adjustments? Enough that facial recognition systems won't match you from footage."

This feels like it should cost more.

Well, it does cost. I'm signing up to do a _job_. This is just--office equipment, and working out contract details.

"I'd like that," I say. Simple.

Marc turns to the side, and sketches out a space in the air. Which is now a reflection of me, or of my vessel image, as I stare at it. No sight of the Ofanite through it; that's how I'll look when I'm back on the corporeal.

God, do I really look that anxious around the Boss? That's going to take a while to get over.

He stands beside me, invisible to this pseudo-mirror. (I suppose it's some use of a Song of Light, as simple and effortless as the walk is, for an Archangel.) And this time he's looking at me the way Lanthano and Zabina did.

I mean. Not exactly. But it's that sort of assessment. Except less for what I'm wearing, and more for what this body looks like.

What he does to change the vessel is beyond anything I can see. Messing with the pieces of reality that attach celestial souls to physical bodies, and I don't understand that any more than I do how Forces hold together.

The man in the mirror stands a few inches taller than I did a moment ago. His eyes are no longer a non-descript sort of color, but a distinct gray. A narrower frame, a sharper face; I don't know what's _changed_ on the face, except that it's different. Not a vast difference; he could be the brother of the previous man. Only--

Once upon a time I asked Valefor to give me a vessel that was inconspicuous. The kind that no one would look at twice in a crowd. As someone over with Industrial Espionage put it, another generic white guy.

This vessel's still white and male, but he doesn't blend into the faceless throng. He's a specific person. Someone you could dislike or trust or otherwise have a reaction to and a memory of, just in passing.

I am my own better-looking older brother. Imagine growing up in my shadow. No wonder I turned to crime and mischief.

"How do you like it?"

"I'm afraid I'm going to fuck this up, Boss." I shove my hands in my pockets, and shake my head to see how my hair settles out. About the same color as before. Better haircut, though. "I like the vessel change." It's here in my projection, now. Slightly different balance, not quite the same ratio on all my limbs. _Almost_ , but I've always liked this vessel best; I'm noticing the differences.

Different, but it still feels like me. That's one thing not to be scared of, while I'm busy worrying about other things I can't change. Or worse yet, things I could change and won't figure out in time.

"You might fail," Marc says. He steps away, but makes sure I'm coming along before he goes very far. And I am, of course. Two sets of steps across this strange half-artificial rainforest floor, side by side. "All of us fail at something, if we live long enough. Most of us several times over. One of these days when we have more time, I'll talk to you about viral exchange across the Atlantic." 

We walk around a tree wider than Penny's office. I do not step on any frogs in the process.

"We make good on our promises," he says. "We pay our debts. We fix our mistakes, or if they can't be repaired, we make restitution. There would be no need for a system to address failure if it didn't come up."

"I'll do my best, Boss." It is almost, and not quite, a promise. But it's true.

"I know you will," he says. Which must also be true.


	15. In Which I Go To Camp

I am almost used to the changes in this vessel. The strangest part was falling into it at the end of the Tether, and how it felt--normal. Accurate. As if I'd been wearing the wrong size of shoes for years, and only now found ones that fit.

As a matter of minor irony, my clothes still fit decently, because they'd been a little off scale to start with. I've never been very good at shopping.

That was more than two hours ago. My continued settling into this vessel has taken place in the passenger seat of a dirty blue pickup truck, as my instructor for the next several days (let's not call her the babysitter) has held onto the keys.

She's an Ofanite. I don't feel like I can argue about driving privileges yet.

Her name is Etele, and she's three inches shorter than me, with longer arms and a narrower frame. The drive's given me some time to contemplate corporeal physicality. (I can't tell how much of the difference in vessel sensation is its changes, and how much is--me being different, in the soul area.) She's neither fidgety nor chatty. We have been driving at exactly ten percent over the speed limit, except for in that one construction zone.

Etele's true name can't be pronounced on the corporeal plane, unless you're one of those distincted angels of War who can chatter in angelic even here. And fortunately or not, we don't have any at hand. Just the two of us, and a drive without so much as the radio playing.

We're down to a quarter tank, and we haven't passed a gas station or sign for one in the last half hour. Not really any of my business. Or so I'm telling myself, while making a thorough effort not to second guess her driving decisions.

Unless I'm supposed to? But--that doesn't seem like the kind of tests Trade runs. Trade likes giving the sort of tests where there's a scheduled time, a proctor, a study guide, and possibly an assigned study group with a tutor at hand. _Guess if you're supposed to trust your coworker or point out their errors_ isn't their style.

Our style.

We take a left at what was not apparent as a road until we were on it, and frankly, even once we're on it, I'm not sure I'd call it that. A track, maybe. The truck rattles and huffs across potholes and rock fill.

"Let me guess," I say. "You drop me off in the middle of nowhere, and I need to resonate my way back to civilization."

"No," Etele says.

A full forty seconds later, she adds, "Maybe we should add that to the course."

I'm still trying to figure out if that was a sign of personality or not when we rattle our way down a hill and through a stand of trees. Our destination is a military base that looks more abandoned than not.

An empty guard post sits by the road with its barrier chained up and out of the way. Etele pulls the truck into the shade of a tree with wide branches. I'm not sure how much that'll do to keep the insides cool, in this heat. The AC's been buzzing all this trip and barely holding the temperature down to tolerable.

"Nice place," I say, and kick a stone across the ground. "Scenic."

Etele walks away.

I'm not really sure what to _do_ with someone who doesn't want to talk. I settle for following.

She knocks on the door to a long, low building that looks to have wandered out of a World War II training montage. Then she steps back, watching the door--no. Watching a reliever that's slipped through the door to observe us right back. The Helper is small enough to barely be visible in its celestial form; its form is not so much translucent as a mirage shimmer co-existent with the corporeal space around it. Seven Forces, maybe, in Sword colors and all made of imprecise edges. That's a kid who's heading straight for a Kyriotate future.

"We're the Monday appointment," Etele says. "Authorization code Alpha Bravo Charlie."

"Correct. Welcome to the base." The reliever examines a palm-sized celestial notebook. "You're cleared for full vehicle and track access for a full two weeks. There's a training group coming through on Thursday, but they're on basics. Shouldn't be any trouble with the overlap. If you need longer than two weeks, please tell me by Friday."

Etele flicks a glance back at me, but says, "Shouldn't."

"The code is ABC?" I shrug at the reliever's startled flutter. "Isn't that a bit...low security?"

"Would you have guessed that?" Etele asks, which is actually a good point.

I shove my hands in my pockets, and try not to fidget. "Want any help bringing in what's on the truck?"

Etele shakes her head, and walks away. She is kind enough to throw back a comment of, "Look around the place," before she goes to deal with...luggage. Whatever's under the tarps in the back. Nothing terribly heavy, from how the truck was handling. I can tell that much even from the passenger seat.

"So," I say to the reliever, as I open the door, "you're the security detail for this place?"

The reliever nods, and flits along to accompany me into the building. It might've been a barracks once, but it's not exactly that now, at least as I understand the concept of those. (The ones in Gehenna probably aren't the best examples of how corporeal ones work.) It's more like a youth hostel, if an unstaffed one: rooms of bunks, basic kitchen facilities, a room set up with chairs at long tables and blackboards at one end. I suppose that last bit makes it more like a really cheap boarding school. You can have a meal and learn the parts of speech at the same time.

"Just you?" I ask the reliever, as I take the back door out of the place. (Steps up and steps down over a tall foundation; the ADA would not approve, and I'm not sure how OSHA would feel about the missing railings on the steps, either. I suppose if we're not being _paid_ to train here it's not their problem.) "That doesn't seem particularly safe, if you actually expect trouble."

"We don't," the reliever says, "but it's not appropriate to leave the base untended. Groups come here all the time. Sometimes every month. If trouble arrives, I can go straight back home and call for help."

"Smart." I hurry ahead to the next patch of shade--at least this base is well populated with old trees--before looking over what else is on base. A pair of long runways, in much better condition than the road here, and another building I would take for a garage, except for its position. A hangar, then, which explains some of what we're doing out here. But not everything. I don't see how aircraft are particularly important to my upcoming job. Watercraft, more so, but this place is the gray-brown of late summer. Nothing green but the leaves on the trees, and they're a little dusty. "Don't you get bored out here?"

The reliever blinks at me a few times. "I have my job."

"Don't anthropomorphize," says Etele, a meter behind me and too damn quiet. It's a good thing I wasn't drinking anything when I spoke.

"What?"

"Angels," she says. She nods to the reliever, and it darts away. Off to patrol the perimeter, I suppose, or whatever it does for fun. "Mercurians aside. Human shape doesn't mean human minds. Most of us haven't even the shape."

"I haven't found celestial minds to be all that different from human ones," I say. "Ethereals can get pretty fucking weird, but there are basic psychological principles that most thinking beings run on. More or less."

"Sample bias," she says. "Your bag's in room 7B. Meet me at the far end of the track in an hour."

Okay. I'm willing to believe that _her_ mind doesn't work much like human ones. The available data being what it is and all.

#

I stand shoulder to shoulder with Etele, staring down the runway. It looks longer from this end. My brand new running shoes are the type that go with brand new socks which cost more per pair than I used to pay for my shoes, on the occasions that I actually bought new shoes instead of swiping them.

At least no one has tried to put me in a track suit.

"To the end and back," she says. The stopwatch in her hand applies the appropriate adverbs.

"It's not really the same without anyone chasing me," I say, and set off.

The day's too hot for running in the sun. It won't slow me down the way it might for a human--I'm pretty sunburn-resistant, I don't get tired the same way, I've got pretty good temperature tolerance, all thanks to having a body that's built from the ground up to hold my soul, instead of growing it the old-fashioned way--but that doesn't make this much _fun_. Sweat's dripping down the back of my neck well before I reach the end.

At which point I turn around and run right the hell back towards the distant figure, who is watching me and not the stopwatch I can't see from here.

There's this old instinct that's telling me, _slow down_. You know that voice, right? Maybe most people aren't built with it, or maybe most people are better at ignoring it. The one that tells you never to show people everything you can do, because they will use it and use you until that snaps right in half. Never do your best because they won't appreciate it. (Proven, a few times over. Not every time, I suppose. Just most.) Don't let on what you really mean.

Play it, ha, cool.

I can stop on a dime. Give me credit for that much. And I do, right beside Etele, while she taps the stopwatch down.

"What's my time like?" I ask, when there's been a few breaths (my own, a touch ragged) without any comment.

"A baseline," she says. "We'll work on your technique."

"...it's running. That's like--walking, but faster. I learned how do it my first day on the corporeal."

Now that is what they call a withering look. "You'll improve," she says. "If you try. Your elbows were everywhere. Watch."

And to her credit, she does the whole damn runway and back too.

#

We're running in the dark when Etele calls my improvement acceptable. I don't have a watch on me, and I left my phone in my room, but I'd call it around ten o'clock. "Do we stop for dinner?" I ask. "Or, you know. A shower. I could go for a shower."

"Do you have a Role?"

"Well, not one that's attached to this vessel properly yet, but they said by the end of the month--"

"No need to eat," she says.

And that's that.

She takes me back to the truck, and throws back the tarp. "Down to the runway," she says, "then a circuit."

"I don't actually anticipate a lot of biking in my future," I say, while I haul the bicycle down from the truck. Ten speed, slightly rusted, with faded streamers on the handlebars. "There's this great new thing the humans came up with, involves four wheels and internal combustion, might've noticed a few around here?"

"Bikes can move faster than a human on foot."

"Etele--"

"You've been chased," she says. "Chased anyone else?"

"Now and again."

"Do you mean to lose the race, if this is all you have?"

I wheel the bike onward. It has those old balloon tires, so it's not incapable of handling the dirt and rocks around here. "Point taken, but is this really where we want to spend our time?"

"We have," Etele says, rather ominously, "as long as it takes."

"How long does this usually take?"

She shrugs.

I push the bike. One of the wheels squeaks. "Have you done this before?"

She nods, and keeps pace with me. Now that I know how damn fast she can run, I can appreciate that this is as close as I'm going to get to consideration from her.

"What kind of people? Brand new Ofanim who've never been to the corporeal, or ex-Calabim like me?"

"Both," she says.

"So you've met a fair number of Ofanim who used to be Calabim?"

"Some."

"What were they generally like?"

"Quieter," she says.

"Yeah." I stop pushing, here at the end of the runway. "But I bet they weren't any cleaner, after that much running in the sun."

#

"You have to be fucking kidding me."

"Wheels," she says, and drops the rollerskates in my arms.

"Seriously?"

"Saved my life, once."

"This pair?"

"One like it."

"Fuck," I say, and sit down on the tail of the truck to put on the damn skates.

#

It has been twenty hours, and I am made of sweat and dust, when she lets me take a shower. We have covered more forms of human-powered transportation than I knew existed; I should count myself lucky that she didn't put me on a unicycle.

She gave me an hour. I spend ten minutes of it in the shower, and ten composing an email to Penny on my phone. Nothing particularly incriminating--it's to his corporeal-side address, and I know it's not particularly secure--but it feels better to get some of that out.

Besides, it takes forever to type on these stupid little smartphone keyboards that they use on the corporeal. The OS is nowhere near as good as the ones in Heaven. If humans have any really strong reason to resent Heaven, it's that Lightning doesn't share the good stuff with them.

Then I go looking for the reliever.

It has another one of those names that can't be pronounced on the corporeal, though it sings quite nicely in angelic; it certainly intends to become a Kyriotate; it's confused by the concept of getting bored, or lonely, though it can at least express that it enjoys watching other people visit and train. It knows every meter of this base, and can go on for several minutes about the local wildlife's habits and personality quirks. Not in the way a child might, but like someone who's studied the actual behavior of wild animals.

It's a proper little Heaven-born angel, who will no doubt go on to make its Archangel proud, and it's far more alien to me than Katherine ever was at her most infuriatingly human moments.

I'm trying not to anthropomorphize. The reliever knows better than to do that.

Etele shows up at five minutes to time, a keyring dangling from one finger. "Coffee?"

Not when there's driving to do. I don't think she'd do that just to taunt me. "I don't drink coffee."

"Good," she says. "Saves time."

#

We spend eighteen hours on vehicle maintenance and diagnosis before she lets me put a key in the ignition.

#

It's nine in the morning, and I have become heartily sick of the truck. There _are_ other vehicles on the base--I've gotten that much out of Etele--but they're nothing I get to lay hands on yet. Ideally I would wash my hands before laying them on anything else at all, as I'm elbow-deep in the engine while my friendly fellow Ofanite looks over my shoulder and delivers laconic critique.

She looks away first; a second later, I hear the rumble of tires on that rock-strewn road. At least two cars.

"Must be Thursday," I say. "You know, I'm pretty sure it's not a good habit for me to get into, losing track of the days."

"You get daily breaks," she says. "Those are countable." Her hands flex at her sides, attention no longer on what I'm doing, so I pull my hands out of the engine in turn.

"Expecting trouble?"

"Always," she says. "It's not likely now."

The reliever stops beside us, its wings a fluttering multi-part mist at its back. (Kyriotate, once it has its Forces, I'm sure.) "Sorry," it says. "They're early. I meant to warn you at noon. Should I tell them to leave the jeep alone until then?"

"They can use it," Etele says.

"Who's in the group?" I ask.

"Servitors of the Sword," says the reliever.

"Any Malakim?"

"All of them," it says, "as of the most recent information I have."

I scrub my hands clean--okay, clean _er_ \--on my jeans, which are going to be a complete write-off anyway. Maybe I'll hang onto them in case my Role suddenly needs to do a lot of house-painting. "Right," I say. "Then I'm going to go wait somewhere _else_ , until someone's filled them in on the basics of where I come from."

"You're authorized," says the reliever, puzzled and unhappy for not being able to understand. Poor kid. (Child-angel thing, and sometimes it does sound like a child. But you don't send children out for weeks alone to watch for danger. It's not human.)

"What do you expect?" Etele asks, and, hell, maybe that question's a test. I don't know sometimes.

"From Malakim? Nothing good. Give me a call when you've cleared it."

When I walk away, neither of them follows.

I mean. It's not exactly that I dislike the entire Choir. I just don't expect them to display much sense or willpower or moderation, and while it's nice that apparently some can, I don't want to bet my vessel on it. I've done things in the last year that were. You know. Things happened.

And because of the way angels work, there's no burying it in the past. Wait long enough and Malakim will probably stop picking up the specifics, avoid the topic and Elohim and Seraphim might not get any reading on me from my reaction or the truth of the matter, but it's still there. That's still _me_ , something that I did, no matter how much of a change redemption made.

The funny thing is I'm not sure what of my past counts as honorable or dishonorable, by the way Malakim read it. I just know what I did that shook me up at the time, and some of it's stuff they'd hate, and some of it's stuff they'd love. I don't know how they _rate_ that. Do they count betrayal as a virtue, when I was betraying demons? Or is loyalty a sin when it's to the wrong people? I stole Eder out of Hell, and I did terrible things to that poor dumb kid working for Unathi, and I gave someone to the Game but he was already a demon... God. I don't know. I don't know how I feel about some of it, or how I should, and I don't know what Malakim will pick up. Or what they'll do when they get readings on things like that. There's no Pax Dei here to save me, and it'd be enough to make a Kobalite crack a smile, if I got stabbed by my own side for something I did before I joined up.

Ironic, but maybe deserved. Just not...useful. I can't make restitution from Trauma, now, can I? And I will damn well be useful to my Archangel for as long as he'll have me and can find some work for me.

Because I am a good and proper angel these days, I don't break into the hangar. Even though that padlock wouldn't keep a preteen with two paperclips out. I walk right on past, and keep on walking, until I find a place where one of the trees is still casting some shade over a rock as tall as I am. It's not a bad place to sit, though I feel a little sorry for the rock; it looked better before it got my handprints all over it.

Maybe I should look on the bright side. If all the incoming Malakim are new to the corporeal, I'm unlikely to run into anyone who's cut off my fingers before.

It's gonna be awkward as hell the first time that happens.

This time around, I'm listening for Etele's approach, so I'm down from the rock and waiting for her when she arrives. "I've never lost a student on the course," she says. She's narrow and sharp, perfectly poised to break into a run at any moment, and the wind's tugging her jacket (how can she stand it in this heat?) back behind her like a cape, dust cutting at her feet. She is inhuman. She is very good at being an Ofanite.

"There's always a first time," I say. "Did you tell them?"

She nods shortly.

"Right. So it's time to go have fun with carburetors again?"

"No," she says. "Time for obstacles."

#

I get out of the truck (with three new scratches in the paint, only counting the ones I heard or felt) and watch two Malakim bump into each other trying to walk out a doorway at the same time. "Please tell me no one is going to arm them," I say to Etele.

"In Heaven," she says, "they don't collide."

And it actually takes me a moment to work out what she means. Not that these angels are better at dodging in Heaven (though that may well be true), but that in Heaven, you just don't have to worry about accidental collisions. Or most accidents on that level. People in crowds don't run into each other. You never reach the door at that awkward moment where you need to figure out if you're going to hold it for the next person or not because of how far away they are. It just...doesn't work out that way.

And then angels come down to the corporeal, the poor bastards, and have to deal with real life.

(Life in Heaven isn't unreal, exactly. Not even in the sense that life in the Marches is. It's just...simplified. Fewer things to worry about. I approve of it existing, but I wouldn't want to _live_ there.)

"I don't see the point," says one of the Malakim. He's taller than me and wider, and walks like he's a little unsure about this whole gravity concept but determined to stomp it down until it does what it's supposed to. "In my mother's day, horses were good enough for anyone. Horses don't explode."

"Not usually," says the other Malakite, a wiry little creature with fidgety hands. I might take her for an Ofanite without other introduction. "They don't, do they?" That back over her shoulder to a third Malakite exiting the barracks behind them.

"Not natively," says the third. He glances over at me, with a quick blink. Whatever he's just picked up, he's not reacting strongly enough for me to tell what it was. If anything. "We'll cover explosives eventually, but that's at another facility."

"I already _know_ explosives," protests the little one, and the two Malakim who collided their way out--students under that commander, I'm gathering--both look our way as well. She frowns at me, losing whatever she meant to say next.

"See," says the tallest one, still oblivious, "so they're far safer, and there's no need to waste time on driving when we could be learning more about--stabbing! shooting! punching!"

"Plenty of time for combat later," says the commander, and with a hand on the shoulder of each, steers them toward the hangar. "Be glad you weren't learning to drive back in my day, when starting the car involved a lot more hand-cranking..."

Etele taps me on the shoulder. "Stop."

"What?"

"Thinking about it," she says. "Not part of the course."

"I can't stop _thinking_."

"Then think about carburetors," she says. "Your hour starts now."

#

_Dear Penny,_

_Who knew that summer camp could be this exhausting? I'm thinking that next year I'll skip going to camp and do something a lot more civilized. Maybe I'll make it as far as Germany and drink beer while wandering around and looking at the architecture. Someone told me Dresden had some interesting post-war buildings, and I've always wanted to follow up on that._

_On the other hand, this is certainly a learning experience. I'm doing so much learning I hardly have time to worry about things like exes (boyfriends and girlfriends both) or the new job or whether my coworkers will get that particular pained look, which I'm sure you're familiar with, if I furnish my apartment entirely with Goodwill and Ikea purchases. I'm going to need a new wardrobe to go with the new job, and maybe a car._

_It's been a long time since I owned a car. At least I know how to change my own oil, now. And several other pieces of cars, so long as they're old enough to not need high-tech equipment for the purpose. E tells me that once upon a time you could keep a new car running indefinitely with nothing but a good blacksmith shop, but I suspect she exaggerates. And who has a forge just sitting around in their backyard these days anyway?_

_Meanwhile, I'm developing a great fondness for showers. Showers, internet access, paved roads, and other signs of civilization. Cities. I miss buildings tall enough that it'd take me some real trouble to reach the roof from the outside, and I've only been here a few days. Remind me never to move to the suburbs, would you?_

_I suppose all this email will reach you at the same time, the next time my phone finds some damn signal around here. Far from here. I'm off the grid, though at least we have electricity here. No coffee, though. Some of the new campers have already complained. The kitchen isn't what I'd call well-stocked. You'd hate it here, without laptops or lattes. I'm sort of coming around to your point of view. Still not that into caffeine, but I'd kill for a beer._

_Not literally._

_Maybe literally. It would depend on who was holding the beer. I'd better go; yet more camp activities starting up in ten minutes, and there's no escaping them. Organized fun is only the first half of that phrase. Take care of yourself, would you? One thing I don't have to worry about, there._

#

We keep walking past Malakim, but we're not on speaking terms, exactly. They have their work; we have ours; and I'm pretty sure they've been comparing notes on resonance results, from the way the tendency to look at _me_ in particular has spread out through the group.

It doesn't really matter. No one's tried to kill me yet. I've dealt with worse than dirty looks before.

There are twelve of them, and they came packed in two SUVs like a particularly lethal set of clown cars. I'm not even trying to keep track of names, though I could recognize any of them by now. It's easiest to memorize their differences by watching them do their own practice in running, jumping, casual walking... They're really worst at that last one. Their work on learning to drive should be entertaining, if I get to watch it.

Etele takes me to a door at the side of the hangar, and hands me a key. "Open the second door," she says. Which means I have to walk back around the hangar (past a Malakite who looks thoughtfully at me in a way I don't like) to undo a padlock. The second door's one of those enormous rolling metal gates like they pull down over shopfronts in cities, except a damn sight bigger. Just behind it sits a shiny little single-prop airplane, balanced on three ridiculously small wheels like the world's most flight-capable tricycle.

To its left, behind the other door, is something far more interesting.

"I want to try that one first," I tell Etele, while she hands me a helmet. "Start with something more maneuverable, work my way up to the fixed-wing type, right?"

"No."

"But it's a helicopter! I'm an Ofanite. It stands to reason that I should learn how to use something with an enormous dangerous spinny portion attached."

"Not yet." Etele takes the helmet back out of my hands, and pulls it onto my head.

"But _helicopters_."

"No, Leo."

"Given the urban environment I usually inhabit, I'm actually more likely to run into helicopters than prop planes, when it comes to high-speed chases using any vehicles available--"

"No."

"Do I get to use the helicopter _eventually_?"

"Depends," Etele says.

"On how I do with the plane?"

"Largely."

I get in the plane, and sit quietly in the co-pilot's seat while Etele explains the controls to me. And god damn but this tiny little airplane has a lot of controls. Not just the up and down and left and right, but switches and dials and buttons and a built-in GPS panel so old it's green on black with clunky pixelated pictures to show the position of the plane between start and destination.

Because I am a reasonably clever student, and trying to be good, we get in the air within three hours.

But it's two long days before Etele lets me even touch the helicopter.

#

I am between the showers and my room--small mercy that there aren't enough Swordies here that anyone's suggested I share a room--when one of the Malakim waves me down. He's the big one who doesn't like the idea of cars, and his progress with driving bears that out. Maybe he'll be lucky and get assigned somewhere with great public transportation.

"I wanted to ask a question," he says. He hasn't learned yet how to make space for other people in a hallway, at his vessel size; he's looming, whether he means to or not.

"Go ahead," I say. I can think of little that I'd want less, but I'm trying to avoid being--what did Orlaith call it? Needlessly hostile? Something fancier, like "excessively contumacious." She was having fun with the advice, and I didn't take it very seriously at the time, but she kinda has a point. Disagreements between angels can escalate a lot further on the corporeal.

"Why did you do it?"

"You're going to have to narrow that down, Virtue." I'm not sure where some of these names for angels come from, but that one's pretty straightforward. Guardians of what's right and proper, as if no one knew before the Fall. I'm pretty sure we'd get along just fine without them.

Maybe better if we replaced the Choir with a lot more Bright Lilim, but that's sort of a different idea right there.

"Why would you give anyone to the Game? Even _demons_ hate them."

Oh how I could do without people looking into my past, and picking out the worst moments of it. At least this is being asked where I have the option of lying if I want it. Not a Seraph to be found on this base, and even Penny wouldn't hold it against me.

"You do what your Superior tells you. Don't you?"

"Of course," he says.

"So did I."

He's not happy with that answer. But it's one he can accept, and he lets me keep on going back to my room, where I'll write another email to Penny and overthink things.

I'm not sure if that was the truth or not. It wasn't far off. We all do our jobs, as if we can leave morality and decisions both to our Superiors. We're their hands and eyes and weapons and toys, to varying degrees. Maybe that's the way of the universe. Leave morality to the people in charge; do what you're told.

No. I don't think that's how it works. It's just a way to make myself feel better about my decisions. _I did what I was told_ feels almost like a statement of virtue, if only by misplaced loyalty, and the more honest _I didn't want to die_ is an admission of personal failing.

Well. I didn't want to die. Still don't. It doesn't feel as much like a pressing concern as it used to, and I can't tell how much of that is redemption and how much is less lethal circumstances.

I'm trying to feel good about knowing that showed up as something dishonorable in my past, not honorable--the tenor of his question would've been different, otherwise--but I just wish he couldn't _see_. What business is it of a Malakite who can't even figure out a clutch as to what I did last winter? He doesn't know me, or my circumstances, and yet he's running around judging people for it.

Like I don't judge people against my own standards just as often.

I tend not to stab people over my disapproval, though. So. Points to me. And he asked, instead of stabbing, so I guess that's points to him, too.

#

Did you know they make a special helmet just for making new pilots learn to fly based on their instruments, with no ability to see out the windshield? Because they do. And I don't like it.

That said, as I haven't hit anything yet, I guess I'm doing pretty well. Not that you could tell from Etele's feedback.

#

There's no real acknowledgment of having finished. We get out of the helicopter, Etele says I should have my bag in the truck in fifteen minutes, and, well. That's it.

The Malakim are discussing tactical maneuvers in the room with the blackboards. I do not stop to say goodbye to any of them on the way through, and they all have their work to focus on anyway.

Fifteen minutes is plenty of time for one last shower and to shove clothes back into the bag.

Etele gives me the keys to the truck. I'm more than happy to see this place receding in the rear view mirror.

"Etele," I say, five minutes or so down the road, "why do you work for Trade?"

"Why not?"

"Because you could serve Wind or Fire or War or any number of other Archangels, and you're with _Trade_. So. Why?"

She hangs her arm out the window. No air conditioning, if she's not driving, and I don't feel like arguing the point. I've gotten used to the heat, and it's not so bad with the wind. "Needed a change," she says at last. "Trade's fast enough."

"Who did you work for before?"

"The War."

I wonder how people distinguish the two Words, in languages that don't use articles like that. With more difficulty, presumably. "Why did you leave?"

"Too much waiting around."

If it's a lie, it's one near enough to the truth that I can't tell the difference. Or maybe she's just that good at lying. "Well," I say, "thanks for the help. All the same."

I don't expect anything like _you're welcome_ from her. And I don't get that. But I don't get _it's my job_ either, and that's something. I mean, we all do our jobs, don't we? But it turns out it matters, what jobs we agree to take.


	16. In Which I Scratch

"It's all in the angles," Orlaith says, and goes on to prove it by sinking another ball. "See?"

"Maybe pool just isn't my game." I lean on the cue stick, and try to work out--well, not the physics, the physics is _perfectly_ straightforward, but how fine motor control and tools combine to deploy the physics in question. "Is this gearing up to be a metaphor?"

"Not really," she says. "I just thought we could have a game as long as we needed to meet up and talk."

And it turns out I'll try nearly any game once, so long as someone provides drinks. Which she has. With some people, I'd wonder if a bottle of beer meant they wanted something out of me. With Orlaith, I'm pretty sure it's that she has a handy reference guide somewhere to my preferences, and has ticked that one off the list.

She finally lets me have another go at the table. I take my own sweet time lining up the shot, since I don't honestly see how I can make this work, angles or none. "How's the paperwork coming along?"

"The paper trail's all laid out," she says. "Sometimes I wonder about the mindset that sends a person down to the corporeal to serve the cause of Heaven by making fake identities for decades at a stretch."

"Says the woman who, with all the power of an angel of God, decided to go into HR."

"It's not human resources if I'm not managing humans," Orlaith points out. "Maybe you should--or not. Ouch."

"I meant to do that," I say, because angelic _does_ have a verb form to indicate sarcasm.

She sinks three balls in a row, wins the game, and starts fishing everything back out to set up a new round. "Practice makes perfect. By the way, your housing credit is still sitting around unused. It sends me a reminder every week, in case I've forgotten to remind you that it's available."

"I'm pretty sure that if Penny wants me to move out, he'll tell me. Seraph, you know." I hand her the rack for setting the balls up again. This place is a butler and glass of whiskey away from being a gentlemen's club. Well, I suppose they'd play billiards there instead. And there wouldn't be any women... So maybe it's not all that close, even with the forest green and mahogany decor. "If Trade's low on space, give it to someone else."

"I don't think it's actually possible to run out of space in Heaven," Orlaith says. "Do you want the break?"

"Not really. But it's possible to run out of prepared spaces, so go ahead and pass the credit on to someone else. It wouldn't be called a credit if it didn't represent some sort of resource investment."

She cracks the balls apart. It's odd how satisfying that kind of sound can become here in Heaven, where things tend to be...not exactly _softer_ , but without the potential for that crack being a gun aimed at you, or your own bones. Violence here is measured, consensual, safe.

It's not that I dislike the safety. It just seems like the difference between standing on a street corner and standing inside an elementary school. The rules are different, and with good reason.

"That reminds me," Orlaith says, while I'm lining up my first shot of the new game. "The Sword ran a credit check on you. And look at that shot you've just set up for me!"

I straighten up from the table. "Your timing is impeccable."

"It's not cheating," she says, "it's a creative use of the environment within the rules as written."

"I met this one Balseraph you'd have the most fascinating conversations with, if no one got shot first." I slouch back against the wall, and watch her do pool table magic. Probably a better use of my time than reminiscing over attractive Balseraphs I've known, every single one of whom was bad for me if given the chance. (Well, maybe not Inez, but I spent most of my time in her company being terrified, which is almost the same.) So there's one error of my ways I'm not likely to fall into while in Heaven. "What did the credit check tell them?"

"I don't know. I don't have your private financial information. That's _private_."

"You met me the day I got to Heaven. I think you could make a pretty good guess."

"Guesses are different." She passes the play back to me, with the cue ball mired in a sea of terrible choices. "My guess is that you'll be in debt up to your eyeballs if they agree to let you spend as much as you've promised them, and I can tell you that much just from guessing what you've offered. But you'll be good for it. You're Trade. That's what we _do_."

"Pay our debts?"

"Make good on our word."

"Same thing."

"Not always."

I hit the cue ball, and the ball I was aiming at, and nothing beyond that goes exactly as planned. Physics experiments are easier on paper. Besides, I'm distracted with contemplation of the ways in which debt and promises can diverge. And all the ways people can get caught between two promises--but then, I already knew some of _that_. Hanging out with Lilim now and again can teach you a lot on the subject. "Not always. If they run the credit check, does that mean I'm getting--consideration?"

"Can't imagine they'd bother if they weren't taking the offer seriously." She wanders around to the other side of the table, and stares at the arrangement of balls for a moment. "Were you trying to set up shots for me, or was that just by accident?"

"You know how it goes. I figured if you had too many choices, you'd freeze up and miss them all."

"Considerate of you," Orlaith says, between one ball into a pocket and the next. "More to the point, I don't think the paperwork would be moving ahead if there wasn't a serious offer on the table for your backup. Either that or I'd have been told it was time for the awkward sit-down about Your Friends The Cherubim."

"I have a friend who's a Cherub, and I wouldn't accept him attuning to me, either."

"So we're both glad we can skip that talk." Orlaith nods to the table. "Perfect shot. Go ahead and take it."

I take the shot. It's a lovely bit of angle work, with two of my balls hitting their pockets, right up until the cue ball follows one in.

"On a scale of one to ten," I say, "where one is abysmal failure, and ten is wild success, about how well do you think this new job of mine is going to go? Honestly."

"I live in Heaven," Orlaith says. "I'm always honest. For example, that was a terrible shot. Honestly."

I cross my arms over my chest.

"Honestly," she says, "you're going to hit every number on that scale, if you don't hit Trauma first. Though I suppose that might be a one or a ten itself, depending on the circumstances. You're not heading down there to fill out TPS reports--"

"What are those?"

"Never mind." Orlaith leans on her cue stick. "My point is, you're going to be running into trouble. Shit happens. You'll do your best. That, I have every confidence in."

"How? _Why_? The confidence part, not the shit happening part. I'm pretty secure on that point."

"Tell me," she says, "that you're going to do your best."

"I am."

"We're Trade. We follow through. So there you go." She lifts the stick to lay its end on the table. "Grab the cue ball, would you? I'll show you how that was supposed to work."


	17. An Epilogue, In Which I Set Out

"Tell me I look okay."

"You look fine," Penny says. Opinion, but true opinion, even on the corporeal. One of the distinct advantages of getting feedback from a Seraph. He steps back to look me up and down again, hands still on my shoulders. "The new vessel suits you."

"Okay by 'at least his clothes aren't decaying from the entropy field around him' standards, or okay by Trade standards?"

"You're dressed appropriately for a person of your profession about to drive a rented truck to another city and then unload furniture from it. You look fine."

I take a breath, and another. "God, listen to me. I'm going on like--" Oh, any number of people that come to mind, but I was thinking about a particular tiny Shedite who spent a lot of time looking for approval. Poor kid, no matter his Band. At least he's in good company. "Like I've never had a Role before. It's just sort of novel to have the _option_ of not looking like a grubby mess."

There's a knock on the door to the employee lounge before it opens. I'm not used to Nik's new vessel, yet; it's not much like the sort of host she used to take. She always went for the sad and wobbly ones in need of assistance, given time to take her pick, and this woman whose life she's taken over is anything but. "I have the truck," she says. "Whenever you're ready? It's not due back until tomorrow."

"I need to go lift furniture," I tell Penny. "And I'm under the impression you have loan applications to review."

"They make computers small enough to carry about these days," Penny says. "Very convenient."

"If you come along, we're going to make you pick up boxes, you realize."

"I will survive," Penny says, "somehow."

"Always did like traveling in threes," I say, and grab the keys Nik's offering me. "No triad jokes, please. I'm barely on speaking terms with Judgment as it is."

"You and me both," Nik says, her smile skewed. "I call shotgun."

"You're making the Most Holy sit in the center seat, Nik? Really? Will his dignity survive?"

"Likely." Penny picks up his coffee. "I expect we'll find out by the time the truck's loaded. Shall we?"

And so we do.


End file.
